Some teachers in the schools I attended must have served in the Second World War and aspects of their behaviour towards us may have been attributable to injuries suffered or experiences endured. I think in particular of Mr Edwards who walked with a limp and gave the impression of being angry all the time. As children we took for granted being swatted at by his stick. It was part of the adult world into which we had little insight and over which we exercised no control. In retrospect, however that seething quality bears the hallmark of pain or frustration, a bitterness poorly understood or catered for and daily insulted by the ungratefulness of boys.

I thought about this while watching Sam Alexander’s portrayal of Don John in Love Labour’s Won, the RSC’s follow-up to Love’s Labours Lost which pitches Much Ado About Nothing as the vanished sequel to the earlier play. In other productions I have seen Don Pedro and his gallants return from their war as if from a sporting fixture, boisterous, triumphant, apparently unscathed. Setting the current version in 1918 allows for – in reality demands – at least a nod in the direction of trauma and disability. Thus Don John’s villainy, explained in the text as a personality defect perhaps arising from jealousy as a younger son, is transformed into rage at being scarred, mentally and in the form of a gammy leg, his cane as much a weapon as a crutch – like Mr Edwards’.

This causality is hinted at rather than fully developed, not being provided for by Shakespeare’s vision of the man. More effective is in this respect is the background imputed to Dogberry. In a performance that stakes a claim to being definitive, Nick Haverson gives us an oaf, a bumpkin, a word-mangling martinet whose twitches and gurning are the stuff of farce. Then, all alone at the end of the examination scene his hand begins to shake and he descends – literally, the stage dropping beneath him – into shell shock-induced desolation, all the more anguished for being inescapably self-aware.

That low ebb for the constable is a high point in this generally irritating production. The Edwardian smugness (convincingly portrayed, if one wants to be charitable); the allocation of regional accents to idiots or villians (Borachio the Brummie); the light entertainment score; the musical numbers with timid choreography : I went on about some of these in my review of the play’s companion piece and will not labour the point now. More exciting things are being done with Shakespeare in other places: Maxine Peake as Hamlet, the continuing adventure that is Propeller under Edward Hall – I am sure there are others. Stratford feels like the establishment, too hidebound by reverence perhaps, too poor to tempt the most interesting casts. Still I went away with lines ringing in my ears (even if they had to compete with those trite yet adhesive melodies). And for that, I suppose some credit must be due.