YOU DON’T READ PLAYS, you might yell at me. PLAYS ARE WRITTEN TO BE WATCHED, NOT READ!
And to that, I say two things:
1) STOP SHOUTING AT ME!
2) You’re right. And wrong.
You see, while the history of plays has always told us that they were always performed to an audience, we always forget that said audience were, in fact, unlearned, illiterate and predispositioned to heckling. The proliferation of literacy in society means that the reading and writing of scripts is an artform reserved no longer for the exclusive classes of learning, but for any man, woman and child.
Saying that, I must say that Stoppard is definitely a dish best had performed. He writes slapstick like none other. He makes literary quips like a rubber duck in tepid bath water. He, quite frankly, is a genius. Genius of the eye and of the pretentious academic mind.
But then again, so is The Simpsons.
