Shakespeare, Will by Joe Calarco

This play opens to the familiar groans of a classroom struggling to engage with a long-dead poet from the West Midlands. Shakespeare isn't for girls, they argue. The female characters are all addendum's to the male ones: and-Juliet, and-Cleopatra, and-Cressida. What is there in Shakespeare's works for young women?

Given that the characters’ main objection to Shakespeare is on the grounds of his titles, it's especially disappointing that the name of this play doesn't refer to any of the ten female actors it requires to produce.

Based on their early observations, the young women depicted could probably also point out for themselves that the majority of Shakespeare, Will doesn't even pass the Bechtel test. The female characters talk endlessly about an absent male, and when they accidentally invoke his spirit, a number of them fawn over him.