True wit, however, is rare, and a thousand barbed arrows fall at the feet of the archer for every one that flies. It’s also too facile an approach if you want to write serious criticism, for, by no accident, the only epigrams that have survived are cruel ones. It’s far easier to bury Caesar than to praise him – and that goes for Cleopatra, too. But to say why you think a play is good, in words that don’t sound banal, is one of the hardest chores in the business.
