- All's Well That Ends Well
- Antony and Cleopatra
- As You Like It
- The Comedy of Errors
- Coriolanus
- Cymbeline
- Hamlet
- Henry IV, Part 1
- Henry IV, Part 2
- Henry V
- Henry VI, Part 1
- Henry VI, Part 2
- Henry VI, Part 3
- Henry VIII
- Julius Caesar
- King John
- King Lear
- Love's Labor's Lost
- A Lover's Complaint
- Macbeth
- Measure for Measure
- The Merchant of Venice
- The Merry Wives of Windsor
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Much Ado About Nothing
- Othello
- Pericles
- The Rape of Lucrece
- Richard II
- Richard III
- Romeo and Juliet
- Shakespeare's Sonnets
- The Taming of the Shrew
- The Tempest
- Timon of Athens
- Titus Andronicus
- Troilus and Cressida
- Twelfth Night
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona
- Venus and Adonis
- The Winter's Tale
This scene begins in a flashback. Vivian is five years old and experiencing the first moment when she “knew words would be [her] life’s work.” She reads aloud from Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, and as her father explains to her what the word “soporific” means, she has a moment of epiphany about the word and illustration.
Over the course of the play Vivian goes through a process of “unlearning” many things, eventually putting aside her detachment, sense of superiority, and high standards of intellect to embrace emotion, kindness, and human connection. This flashback to her…