He had been obliged to watch a Shakespeare play once, for reasons he could not now remember, and it had been three or four, or subjectively eighteen, of the longest hours of his life. If he wanted to see people shout incomprehensibly at one another he’d go to the Continent, and the thought of being in the company of someone who talked about ‘the Bard’ or, even worse, ‘the Swan of Avon’ chilled his blood.
