Comments on Today The Stranger Suggests

"Helena, a girl physician whose evident smarts don't prevent her from throwing herself at a snotty, unworthy boy."

Don't you mean, more accurately: "Helena, a servant who stalks and eventually entraps a Lord who does not love her into marriage with her against his will and then rapes him"?

That too. But, you know, the play has a lot of latent feminism (read the Dark Lady sonnets and "But, O strange men!/That can such sweet use make of what they hate,/When saucy trusting of the cozen'd thoughts/Defiles the pitchy night: so lust doth play/With what it loathes for that which is away" side by side--there's a repentant misogynist for you) and this production pooh-poohs the class divide.

Yeah, but at it's root, it's really just about a girl who does not understand that "no means no" and her victim.

I've never been convinced by Bertram's sudden conversion from hatred to love. I've always found that troublesome and can't help but wonder how we would feel about it if the roles were reversed. If, for example, the wealthier more powerful man raped the poorer less powerful woman and then she suddenly decided that gosh, she really does love him after all! (Just needed to be violated to realize it...)

"so lust doth play/With what it loathes for that which is away"

I don't think she's talking about all women, but a particular woman. And while it is misogynistic to hate all women because they are women, it is not misogynistic to hate one particular woman because she forced an unwanted marriage upon you against your will.

Otherwise you would have to read "for that which is away" to be something other than woman (man) which would admittedly make it a much more interesting passage, (making him a closeted homosexual instead of a repentant misogynist).

and remember, this soliloquy takes place while she if formulating her bait and switch plan where she (what he loathes) will surreptitiously replace Diana (what is away) as the plaything of his lust.

In fact, that soliloquy would be more accurately read to imply that she is an unrepentant misandrist...