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I find the comedies the most difficult to follow, since they are full of word play that requires knowing the culture of the time. If you're familiar with the culture, everything makes sense. If you're not, you miss the point of many lines. I guess I'm not familiar enough, because I often have to pause and piece out what was said and try to guess the meaning. That's possible when reading, but impossible when listening in real time. Even worse, poor actors who don't quite understand the gist of their lines get the stresses wrong, and make the job even harder. In high school, we used textbooks that had the lines on one page, and notes on the facing page. I would groan when I read the meaning of a phrase and realized that I would never have guessed it on my own.
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