Standards have declined. When Shakespeare set his characters a challenge in his early comedy, he measured it out in years. In a bid to lead a life of contemplative study, the king of Navarre persuades his friends to join him in a three-year regime of abstemiousness, requiring them to renounce women and cut back on food and sleep.
Now, by contrast, playwrights Elizabeth Godber and Nick Lane have revisited the material but cut the pledge down. Their young men have to last a whole three days.
