“The melancholy Jacques in As You Like It declares that, ‘All the world’s a stage,/ And all the men and women merely players.’ Macbeth cries, ‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,’ and Prospero sighs, ‘the great globe … shall dissolve / And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, / Leave not a rack behind.’ … But the metaphors themselves aren’t the problem. It’s the bitter taste we’ve baked into them.”