This is... kind of entertaining in parts, but there are plot holes you could drive a truck through. Not only the timelines, but how come Bertram doesn't recognise his own wife? Helen does this creepy bed-swap thing with the woman Bertram actually wants to fuck, and he can't tell the difference. To be fair, Bertram is a genuinely awful person and there's no reason for him not to be as stupid as he is sleazy and unkind, but I'm stuck on why anyone would go to such lengths to ensnare him in the first place. I want to like the idea of the poor young woman winning the hand of the nobleman husband through cunning and virtue (instead of the all too common reverse), and I can understand, as the introduction states, why this made the play so historically uncomfortable for audiences. But Helen is a rapey obsessive - and let's be honest, if it was a man tricking a woman into bed with him when she thought she was sleeping with someone else we'd call it what it is - and while I have sympathy for Bertram's desire to escape a forced marriage, as I said... he's awful. So this is basically the story of two awful people being awful, and I suppose the only bright side is that neither of them is inflicted on anyone else and Diana gets a dowry (and, presumably, escape from the whole stupid situation).

I mean, it's Shakespeare so the words are lovely. But the story's really not.