Is There Such A Thing As Too Much Shakespeare?

Washington, D.C.’s new six-month Shakespeare festival is quite the undertaking, featuring 22 different arts organizations (including one that specializes in tiny plastic ninjas,) and promising to more or less claim the nation’s capital in the name of the Bard. “What would the Bard himself think of all this? He lived in a time when his plays were performed in ill-lighted theaters where the bulk of the audience stood rather than sat in a big pit quite near the stage. Some of these patrons came bearing spirits, with which to endure some of the longer, duller speeches, and even rotten fruits, eggs and vegetables, with which to provide constructive criticism for the actors.”