If I were to confront Bugs, I might say to him, “You have missed a few things, Bugs. You do not understand that Shakespeare incorporated the central image of Plato’s Phaedrus into his play, the charioteer, though the chariot would have appeared automatically if you had used logical blocking and had not cut Lucio’s lines or given them to the Provost in Act II, Scene 2. Nor do you understand why Shakespeare named a character in his play ‘Juliet,’ when he knew that somebody had already written a very successful love story with a character in it named ‘Juliet,’ and so you never considered that maybe Measure for Measure is a love story. You ignored Shakespeare’s hints and presented us with your own rancid ideas. You should be whipped first, Sir, and hanged after.” Then I might glare at him. But as Nietzsche says, if you glare into the abyss long enough, the abyss glares back, and I’m not Nietzsche, but the production was certainly an abyss, so enough is enough.

I have worn out my welcome, and I have committed what is for theater professionals the unpardonable sin: to be a critic. But I’m not too ashamed. At both performances I behaved myself. At All’s Well That Ends Well, I tried to start a round of applause for John Cullum when, as the King, he left the stage after laying down the law to Bertram, but nobody joined me, probably because the rest of the audience had been so stunned by such a piece of excellent acting, which exactly suited the play and made ringing sense of the text, that their brains were frozen, their mouths were hanging open and their limbs were paralyzed. I was with my beautiful friend Susan, who was wearing shorts, and from time to time I caused her to glance at me when I had a seizure because of something the management had done (for example, rewriting the text to force Diana to rhyme “maid” with “false”). And when there were stretches that were absolutely unspeakable I lowered my head and stared at Susan’s perfect legs until I could tell by the noises coming from the stage that it was safe to look up again (although less fun).

But as Nietzsche says, if you glare into the abyss long enough, the abyss glares back, and I’m not Nietzsche, but the production was certainly an abyss, so enough is enough.

Look, Shakespeare is bullet-proof. He can stand up to, and overcome, any kind of abuse. Despite my sour remarks, the vast majority of the spectators had a good time. This article won’t be published until long after the production has closed. I doubt that any of the actors will read this, and the directors, Mr. Elmer-has-done-it-again Fudd, and Bugs the Bunny, still basking in the lauds of publications like The New York Times, can ignore me. I would have liked to have praised everybody in the cast — I think they were all good — but see my remarks above about how actors are subject to the director.

You should indubitably go to Central Park next summer and see a production of a Shakespeare play. It’s free! The setting is beautiful! The text is by the greatest writer in the English language! You strike a mighty blow for civilization! How can you go wrong?