The Nature of Speech in the Plays

In common with many others, I had become interested in Shakespeare’s plays by reading their texts when I could not see them in performance. They were more akin to the poetry I was reading than any other form of literature and so I started to study them as if they were poems that demanded my close and very personal attention. When I could see them in performance, however, much that engaged and moved me left me wondering what had happened and why this was so different from reading the texts. I wanted to know how speeches affected an audience and, more basically, how actors turned text into speech and poetry into theatre, and what were the consequences of these transformations. I was grappling with fundamental and difficult questions for any student of the plays.