It depicts an ageing William Shakespeare at his Warwickshire home in 1615 and 1616, suffering pangs of conscience in part because he signed a contract which protected his landholdings, on the condition that he would not interfere with an enclosure of common lands that would hurt the local peasant farmers.

[4] In the introduction to Bingo, Bond describes this incident: "A large part of his income came from rents (or tithes) paid on common fields at Welcombe near Stratford.

The Old Woman tries to sound out Shakespeare's intentions with regards to Combe's land scheme and warns him that it will ruin local families.

Combe arrives to convince Shakespeare to sign a contract stating that he will not interfere with the scheme, in exchange for the security of his own lands.

Judith berates her father for his toleration of their misconduct and his lack of sympathy with the local people: "You don't notice these things.

[13] There were queues at the box office to see Sir John; and The New York Times praised his performance and director Howell's "clean, lucid sense of line," adding, "The text is as uncompromising as anything Bond has written, and its performance serves it as sparely and unshowily as a dedicated string quartet addressing itself to Bach or late Beethoven.

The play was revived by the RSC, opening on 25 July 1995 at Stratford's Swan Theatre, directed by David Thacker, with Paul Jesson (Shakespeare), Ken Farrington (Old man), Sarah-Jane Holm (Judith) and Dominic Letts (Ben Jonson).

"[17] It was revived again at the Young Vic Theatre, opening on 16 Feb 2012, directed by Angus Jackson, with a cast led by Patrick Stewart (Shakespeare), John McEnery (Old Man), Catherine Cusack (Judith) and Richard McCabe (Ben Jonson).

[18] The production, according to Michael Billington in The Guardian, "confirms Bond's 1973 play has achieved the status of a modern classic.

"[19] Neil Dowden of Exeunt also praised McCabe's Ben Jonson as "scene-stealing [...] full of entertaining candour and self-loathing wit".

Bond begins the introduction to Bingo by mentioning the minor historical inaccuracies he introduced into the play for dramatic purposes; for example, the Globe Theatre burned down in 1613 rather than in 1616, and Michael Drayton was also present at Shakespeare's "last binge.

[23] After the November 1973 premiere at the Northcott Theatre, some wrote favorably about the play while others felt Bond had denigrated Shakespeare.

[24] In 1974, Ronald Bryden of The New York Times billed Bingo as "a passionately cold, powerfully unforgiving play" from the "Royal Court's most important playwright".

"[26] In a review of the 2010 revival by Angus Jackson, The Guardian's Michael Billington said that "Bond's portrait of Shakespeare as a guilt-ridden figure, haunted by memories of the cruelty and injustice of his society, is moving and plausible.

But Billington criticized "Bond's implicit suggestion that art is impotent in the face of violence and suffering [...] while plays may not overturn the social order, they can both reflect and unsettle it.

"[27] In 2011, M. Ramana Raju and V. Ravi Naidu declared, "This play [...] can be considered to be an eye-opener to all the people of the society regarding inhumanity and injustice which are becoming dominant.

"[30] In another review of a 2012 performance at Young Vic, Billington dubbed Bingo a "bony masterpiece" and described the work as "a guilt-ridden indictment of all poets and dramatists, himself included, for their exploitation of suffering and cruelty."

Speaking a recognisable modern English in contrast to the phonetically presented Warwickshire dialect of the locals, the dying writer is given bleak, Lear-like prose, as when snowfall makes him reflect".

Though William Shakespeare wrote plays more powerful than life, Bond naively expects the man to be as complete as his creations--as compassionate as Prospero, as furious at hypocrisy as Hamlet, as enraged at poverty as broken Lear.

"[34] In 2010, Karen Fricker wrote that Patrick Stewart's performance "cannot liven up the play’s heavy-handed politics and lack of compelling action.

"[35] A reviewer in the Evening Standard argued that "Bond's lugubrious, monotonous writing transforms the potent subject matter into something wearingly reductive.

[36] Ismene Brown of The Arts Desk wrote, "It's a damn good set-up, not nice but plausible – still I’m not sure that this really adds up to a play about characters who change, rather than a tiptilted hommage.

[...] Bond guns the social issues, but stumbles over the necessary language to make these ancillary characters sparkle – they prate, they strike attitudes (proto-feminism, proto-socialism), they’re even boring.

[38] In the same paper, Tim Walker lauded Richard McCabe's performance as Ben Jonson but referred to the play itself as "very boring".

Walker said Stewart "makes the best of what is a rather unappealing part [and] little more than a vehicle for a rather minor writer to attempt to score points against an incomparably greater one.