Why Read Shakespeare?

[Peter]

I enjoy performances, but I think reading Shakespeare is richer for me. The language is a bit archaic and I think the extra second or two to think about the words and what they mean. If I know a play well, it's easy to follow every syllable on stage but it's a bit of a chore when the play is not fresh in my brain.

So that's why I read it as opposed to watch it.

[Bryn]

Peter wrote: "So that's why I read it as opposed to watch it."

I prefer to read, for several reasons, and that's one, that I need time with the language. Another is that I want privacy, which is also why I don't even wish I had the funds to go to the opera. Only recently have I begun to collect dvds, it's a newish idea for me, to watch that way. I'm simply used to words on a page and that's where I want them.

Not that I'm not smitten with awe and envy at these descriptions of performances.

[Peter]

The page also lets us scroll back and forth. You can go back to check on something that happened a few pages ago.

[Martin]

I agree with Louise and Gilbert, the plays have to be seen; but I also agree with Bryn and Peter, the plays have to be read. They are essential complementary experiences.

Occasionally you hear people say that they should only be seen, and to read them is to misunderstand the intention for which they were produced, but there are some good answers to that. One is that for most people, the opportunity of seeing all the plays on stage is very limited. A Victorian could never have seen Measure for Measure for instance. Another is that the plays get cut. Film versions cut the plays so much you get almost a "reduced Shakespeare Company" version. (I estimate that in the recent film of Coriolanus, 95% of Act I was cut. You might as well have had Chuck Norris doing it.) But stage versions cut about 10-15%, at least. This gives extra time for the audience to down their gins and tonics during the interval etc. And what happens is, the directors chop out the difficult bits -- that makes it easier on actors and audience. So it tends to be the same bits that are always cut out. Therefore you can't hear all of Shakespeare, even if you've seen all his plays on stage. Generally, it gives the impression (and you may have noticed this, comparing reading with seeing) that S is much easier than he really is.

Another good argument for reading as well as seeing is that people did it in S's time as well. The continuous publishing and selling of the quartos proves that. If it's okay for S's contemporaries, it should be okay for us.

But of course (and I think everyone accepts this nowadays), they are plays, for the stage, not novels in dialogue or film scripts or tales in verse. And I think seeing them for real demonstrates that as nothing else can.

[Gilbert]

Martin wrote: "I agree with Louise and Gilbert, the plays have to be seen; but I also agree with Bryn and Peter, the plays have to be read. They are essential complementary experiences.

Occasionally you hear pe..."
Before Martin's thoughtful post, I was wondering about the sense that one must choose, or declare a preference- either/or. I'd never be really content with just one or the other. I'll always insist on both. As anyone reads the plays, aren't they staging in their imaginations? Having been an actor, I may imagine them with the limitations and the particular challenges that a live performance presents, but I doesn't any play's having been written for theatrical performance influence the way one reads them? Shakespeare was a very practical man of the theater, and the theater of his time had its conventions. These are working on me as I read them. I sometimes they worked more in the minds of some directors as they stage (or film) them.