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Spiders... Aranea (defined in Chambers). My parsing is likely to be hopeless, so I'll leave that!

Thanks malone.

Got the spiders as only a couple of blank cells in the grid made it easy to find the genus.

The only word I am not sure of is for Steamer filters without head for old pains (t being extra in paints)

Is the second letter T?

The shading does give a word that matches with the title of the play.

I'm not 100% sure of my answer for Steamer... - I'm still mulling it over.

i went with strifts... st for steamer?

probably not st for steamer but strifts are "archaic pains" so I think it's ok

Abbreviation for Steamer followed by a word for filters (think of flour) less its first letter gives an old word for distress.

the spider parsing is AR from topless mar(s), AN (bottomless and) + EA ..40% of earth

str not st for steamer + (s) ifts /filters

Thank you all.

The title of the puzzle was more significant than what seemed at first.

The barless grids always look impossible to do but this was not that difficult.