[Harmon]

[QUOTE=Prestidigitweeze;1464300]

"In his own write," if so intended, is a joke of John Lennon's. Odd to see it here. Much ado about "noting"? I'd assume you were making the same joke Shakespeare did throughout that play...

How so - is a script not a writing? Does it not involve noting? And if Shakespeare makes an extended pun, shall I not extended clear outside the play?

...if you hadn't followed it with the malapropism "all roads lead to Room." But perhaps you're making a pun about the size of the stage.

No malappropriation. "Rome" was pronounced "Room" in Shakespeare's day. Learned that, IIRC, in a broadcast involving a snippet of Mark Rylance's (?) production of an original language version of one of the plays. The original language being more like Irish English than Anglo English. The point being that you hear this.

Which, again, is most efficiently and exhaustively done by studying the plays, the annotations and the historical background. You're making a very good case for the importance of reading Shakespeare.

Yes, indeed, but the case which is made is to read in support of the performance, not in preference to it.

By "country matters," you might mean the ways in which dialects, visual cues such as flags, customs, pageantries and even gestures are associated during the performance with distinct and recognizable places.

Not at all. Although I would have meant that, too, if I had thought of it. I intended only to point out that Shakespeare's pun, while evident in the writing, is amplified by the performance. A straight face to the lady in question, followed by a sly look to the audience. Maybe an appropriate inappropriate gesture as well.

Some playwrights write less and imply a myriad of interpretations, leaving it to the actors to imply more than is apparent. But Shakespeare's directions are clear in the very lines the actors speak, which means they are clear to readers as well: In that way, his plays are quite self-contained.

I don't buy that. Shakespeare was present at the rehearsals. He didn't need to write down the stage directions. I'm sure he gave the stage directions at the rehearsals, that he made up a lot of them as he went along, changed his mind from performance to performance based on audience reaction, that the actors had their own ideas, and that the resulting production - as with every production - was a joint effort grounded in the text, but in actuality an outcome with many creators.

Few performances I've seen have come close to the transports of reading him (and with that, many actors would agree).

That's your experience, which you are entitled to, of course. Mine has been that practically any performance transcends the script.

If all you do is read the plays, you only get hold of part of the elephant.

Let me remind you of something you said earlier: "What's 'dishonest' is to say people are making an argument that they are not actually making."

I'm sure you can read better than that. I'm pretty sure I wrote better...

"(As for the difference between theatre & literature, I suggest that literature requires no enactment to be complete."

That is a very unusual definition of literature, and it is not borne out by the ideas of many playwrights.

What playwright writes and does not envision the performance? Now, I can imagine a work of literature presented in the form of a script, just as one can be presented in the form of letters. But no one need to perform that script to complete the work of art.

A script intended to be performed is incomplete without that performance. Surely a performance is not literature. So how can something which is more than the script not be literature, while the script, subsumed in the performance, is?

Let's look again at the original post:

It turns out that they never actually read the real play! Not even a snippet of it. They saw the modern movie, they read a graphic novel adaptation and that was it! Am I the only one who thinks that is completely wrong? We read a play a year---the REAL version--when I went through high school. It was part of the curriculum. I understand not everyone is a literature nerd and some kids might find the language quaint. I can understand hooking them in with Leonardo DiCaprio. But then after that, you give them the real play, no?

Notice that the assumption here is that the "real play" is the written play. I continue to believe that the real play is the performance, not the script. And truthfully, I'd give students the graphic novel before I gave them the bare script, assuming that the GA faithfully replicated some version of the script. They would be much more likely to actually read the GA.