For me, I immediately twigged on the Shakespeare connection when we had two dudes, one royal and one not, sharing a room, with one of them in love with the other, and then someone said a country name that sounded like "Lyria." I said, "Oh, Twelfth Night." And then the prince is madly in love with a girl he saw for only a moment and I said, "Ah, R&J instead. Is this just going to be a rundown of the romances?" Then there was almost no Shakespeare for the rest of it and I was mildly disappointed.
But that's why I thought Asa was a girl for a longish portion of the early story; I assumed s/he was Viola.
(On the other hand, I also associate Asa as a boy's name because Samaritan's cover identity in Astro City is "Asa Martin." So I dunno. It didn't bother me super much either way, honestly.)
(What DID bother me was the bit where he sleeps with Zalani while she's drugged and clearly not all there. That's on the Unforgivable Sins list for me, and it made Asa a character I no longer wanted to see much of.)