A Round of Applause for Reading Plays

Currently Reading: Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

(Yes, I’m giving Invisible Man another shot as I feel invincible after Moby Dick and I’d really like to finish this book before the end of the year.)

Cliché as it may sound, there’s something magical about seeing a live performance of a play. The lights, the costumes, the makeup, the sets – everything and everyone has been transformed to transport you to another world; to sweep you away from whatever is occurring in your life and suck you into the fictitious world of the actors. The scene is set, the lights dim, the curtain rises…

… and you’re sitting in your comfy chair at  home, snuggled in your bathrobe with a good book to begin?

Even though we’ve all done it – most likely in a Shakespeare unit in school – there’s something slightly incongruous about reading a play. Although there are plays that fall into the genre of “closet dramas” (which are plays that are intended to be read and give little to no consideration of the actual staging of the story), most plays are meant to be performed; they were written to be turned into a production that others could watch rather than read.

For this reason, a play is often enjoyed more when it’s acted out. Case and point: I took my roommate to see the Folger’s production of Romeo and Juliet this past Friday. It was his first time seeing Shakespeare performed live and at the end he asked, “Why don’t they teach Shakespeare this way? It makes so much more sense!”

For my roommate – and I’m sure for many others – seeing a production of a Shakespeare play actually makes the language much more accessible and therefore the story more enjoyable. He was simply astonished that Shakespeare was so often read like a novel when it’s not one; it’s writing that’s meant to be spoken and heard, not read.

So why is it that we consistently read plays? How on earth does this benefit us?

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided that there are several reasons we shouldn’t just stop reading plays entirely.

First, a play can still be considered a work of literature even if it’s a slightly different format from other works. Plays can be just as richly infused with themes, symbols, plot structures, and character developments as novels. Thus reading a play affords one the opportunity to dissect the literary devices used and to deeply analyze the story and characters that watching a play just doesn’t allow for as the action in a production is continuous. The audience can’t take time to ponder a particularly insightful monologue or sort through a confusing exchange of dialogue at a live performance as the actors will move on with the story whether you’re ready to move on or not.

Second, reading a play without seeing any performance of it means you’re working with a blank slate; you won’t have any preconceived notions of how a line should be said or how a character should look. A performance can very much color the way you view a play. This is especially true if a director or actor has decided to highlight certain aspects that you may not have thought were important. Perhaps he believes one theme is the main message of the play, but in reality, it’s just his perception of it. Maybe an actor decides to play to extreme subtext. Now you will be much more likely to only notice that theme or to read that subtext, which may or not be there. In much the same way that a movie version of a book can ruin the way you read that book afterwards – I’m looking at you Harry Potter films – seeing a play can also ruin your opportunity to let your imagination do what it will with the text provided.

Third, and probably the most important, reading a play allows for quality control. Again, a production of a play is subject to so many variables – like the director’s or the actors’ choices – and sometimes those variables don’t just affect the interpretation, they affect the quality. Ever see a production of Guys and Dolls in which Sky Masterson is going through puberty? Ever go to a play and the main actress has an extremely annoying habit of flapping her arms a certain way or maybe she just has a voice that sounds like nails on a chalkboard? Ever see a performance of Jekyll and Hyde in which the title character(s) has a lisp? I have. It’s not pleasant. If a play is a really good play, the text can stand alone. Reading it saves it from a potential mauling and therefore can save your opinion of it.

Don’t get me wrong. I do mostly agree that a play should be seen. I’m just arguing that maybe there’s some logic to the idea of introducing a play as text rather than performance. Perhaps the best option is to do both.

Teaching Book History Workshop Highlights and Reflections

Currently Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

For about a month now, I’ve wanted to write a post in response to the incredible weekend workshop that my department at the Folger Shakespeare Library co-hosted for undergraduate professors from all over the world. The workshop was called Teaching Book History and during this workshop, professors gathered to debate “how print culture, physical bibliography, and textual studies might best be integrated into a curriculum; what digital humanities may offer book historians; and how faculty and librarians can teach book history without access to a large collection of rare material” (description taken from our website). In short, it was a forum for undergraduate professors to discuss the “how” and “why” behind teaching book history courses at their respective institutions.

Adding to the endless list of reasons I love my job, I got to be part of the team helping out for the weekend. It was my job to assist our curators with lecture needs ranging from setting up a projector to displaying books from the 17th century to preparing the quills and ink as part of a demonstration. While occasionally stressful, my duties were fairly simple and were usually completed before the lecture, not during. This meant that I had the privilege of being a fly on the wall at this workshop, hearing some of the smartest people in the fields of early modern literature, history, and special collections not only share the knowledge they have, but debate and discuss with each other. It was a rare look into the minds of professors and the logistics of preparing the classes they teach.

It was fascinating and eye opening! In both a negative and a positive sense actually. I was somewhat disheartened to discover just how many gaps there are in my English knowledge since I focused so exclusively on Shakespeare and creative writing during my undergraduate career. Not that I regret taking my elective classes. I just wish that I had had more time to explore all the areas of the major and I definitely wish I had taken a course in book history after our weekend workshop. I always assumed I would find the subject mind-numbingly boring, but after hearing our Curator of Rare Books and our Curator of Art and Special Collections describe all of the nuances and careful artisanship that used to go into making books before the Industrial Revolution, I discovered I found the subject stimulating rather than boring.

And I got paid to attend these talks!

I know for my non-academic minded friends, the amazing, almost unreal feeling of luck and happiness that that sentence makes me feel will never be understood. But some of you out there must appreciate that this past weekend, I essentially was paid to learn!

Besides this financial benefit, some of the highlights from the workshop, for me, included hearing a reference to both Oregon Trail and Fifty Shades of Grey in one professor’s speech, watching a room full of undergraduate professors (i.e. mostly PhD’s) struggle to figure out a folding exercise (even though my amusement was completely unfair since I was absolutely lost just listening to it), and finally the discovery that there’s an entire field dedicated to studying the notes people leave in the margins of books – marginalia.

As the granddaughter of a librarian, I’ve always viewed notes and scribbles in the margins of books to be a desecration of property on  par with graffiti on the side of a church. However, the anthropology major in me was awakened when these professors pointed out just how much there was to learn about a person or a culture from marginalia and how it could sometimes be the most fascinating part of a document. After all, it’s a look inside the person’s mind, like reading his diaries or letters but in relation to a very specific topic. It’s certainly made me rethink my anger towards my previous used book owners.

For me, though, my favorite part of the weekend had to be Professor Ian Gadd's (Bath-Spa University) lecture called, “Touching Books.” It so perfectly and eloquently explained why I have such an attachment to hard copies of books, why I find the experience of reading from a book so much more satisfying than reading from an eReader. He described how essential touch is, how it intimately connects us to a book in a way that I believe an eReader just can’t.

In fact, if you think about it, there’s a lot more individuality to books than you might realize. Professor Gadd explained how he emphasizes this point through an exercise he does with his classes in which he has his students identify the genre of a book blindfolded, making their assessments solely based on touch. You don’t normally think about it, but a cookbook has a completely different feel from a novel and a novel has a completely different feel from a textbook, which feels different from a children’s book. 

Touch is so fundamental to our experience in handling an object. Just look at what a child does when you ask him to look at something. His first instinct is to touch it. Even adults are obsessed with being able to touch objects as evidenced by all the new technologies that allow people to “handle” digital items through touch screens.

This presentation made me really think about why exactly I find touching a book so important to the experience of reading. It made me realize that turning the pages of a book creates what Professor Gadd called an “electrical intimacy” that flipping the “page” on a screen just can’t. Through an eReader, every book touch experience is the same; it removes part of the connection I create to that specific book. Yes, there are advantages to the electronic book, but Professor Gadd helped me to understand why it’s unlikely real books will ever be obsolete or at least why I believe they shouldn’t ever become so.

Of course, at the end of the workshop there was a casual closing reception during which I attempted to talk to Professor Gadd and I’m sure I humiliated myself because I was in such awe of him. Figures.

But overall, the workshop was an unbelievable success! The energy and enthusiasm of the whole weekend was inspiring and contagious, not to mention fun. I can’t wait for our next one and I hope that it too will receive a standing ovation – because yeah, that happened.