"It was what?" Hideya asked over his tea. "I don't think I quite followed that." A week left until Yata's show opened, and like usual, Yata had Opinions on the subject. Not so many Opinions as Flowers for Algernon had generated, but still enough that Hideya was on his third cup of tea.

"I said I don't understand why Shakespeare is held up on the pedestal he is. Prolific playwright? Definitely. Popular playwright? No argument from me. Great literature? That's where I draw the line. Have you read Shakespeare!? His humor is juvenile and frequently crass. He heavily on obvious tropes. Popular entertainment, yes. High literature, no."

"And his all connects back to Hamlet how?" Hideya asked.

"It's all part of the bigger picture. You can interpret the character however you like, but it will fall flat if you don't take the audience's perspectives into account. It's less of an issue with original or lesser known works where the audience comes in with fewer suppositions, but for well known works like Hamlet and the Scottish Play."

"Macb--"

"Don't say it!"

"I thought you didn't believe in curses."

"They've never been scientifically proven; there's quite a bit of evidence out there on the power of suggestion. But they haven't definitively disproven the curse on the Scottish Play either. Better safe than sorry."

"I love that brain of yours," Hideya said. "And you of course."

"Love is a social construct."

"Maybe, but that doesn't mean it can't also be real."