Can confirm from personal experience that ‘I never write to critics’ is a direct lie.

I’ve done it!

I can say that I had the great privilege of reading this prepublication and I think it is the most important book in our field for years: informed, generous, poetic, generative. Do read it. Brava, Hester

Perfect! It needs to be unscented!

The ’king’ & ‘queen’ travelled along the Thames on golden leopards, and ’Indian pages’ carried ingots of silver and gold. This spectacle exhibited stereotypes about the Americas, but also, perhaps, a knowledge of the longstanding metalworking traditions of peoples including the Incas and Muiscas.

Image: Program for The Tempest, Shakespeare Tercentenary Celebration, New York, 1916. The cover shows Caliban. Program Collection, Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. 4/

Completely agree re Office vibe - and found him much too geeky-can’t-get-girlfriend rather than a bully

Agree, although felt the opening framing of the duke’s motives wasn’t carried through. What did you think of Angelo? Quite a lot of audience sympathy for him, I felt, when I saw it

Yes - have kept thinking about it ever since. Super interesting indeed