How To Read A Book- A Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading - Mortimer J. Adler, Charles Van Doren [106]
Many of Shakespeare's plays require this kind of activity on the part of the reader. Our point is that it is always desirable, no matter how explicit the playwright was in telling us exactly what we should expect to see. ( We cannot question what we are to hear, since the play's words are before us. ) Probably you have not read a play really well until you have pretended to put it on the stage in this way. At best, you have given it only a partial reading.
Suggestions for Reading Stories, Plays, and Poems 225
Earlier, we suggested that there were interesting exceptions to the rule that the playwright cannot speak directly to the reader as the author of a novel can and often does. ( Fielding, in Tom Jones, is an example of this direct addressing of the reader in one great novel. ) Two of these exceptions are separated by nearly twenty-five centuries of time. Aristophanes, the ancient Greek comic playwright, wrote the only examples of what is called Old Comedy that survive. From time to time in an Aristophanic play, and always at least once, the leading actor would step out of character, perhaps move forward toward the audience, and deliver a political speech that had nothing whatever to do with the action of the drama. It is felt that these speeches were expressions of the author's personal feelings. This is occasionally done nowadays-no useful artistic device is ever really lost-but perhaps not as effectively as Aristophanes did it.
The other example is that of Shaw, who not only expected his plays to be acted but also hoped that they would be read.
He published them all, at least one ( Heartbreak House ) before it was ever acted, and accompanied the publication with long prefaces in which he explained the meaning of the plays and told his readers how to understand them. ( He also included very extensive stage directions in the published versions. ) To read a Shavian play without reading the preface Shaw wrote for it is to tum one's back intentionally on an important aid to understanding. Again, other modem playwrights have imitated Shaw in this device, but never as effectively as he did.
One other bit of advice may be helpful, particularly in reading Shakespeare. We have already suggested the importance of reading the plays through, as nearly as possible at one sitting, in order to get a feel for the whole. But, since the plays are mostly in verse, and since the verse is more or less opaque in places because of changes in the language that have occurred since 160, it is often desirable to read a puzzling passage out loud. Read slowly, as if an audience were listening, 226 HOW TO READ A BOOK
and with "expression"-that is, try to make the words meaningful to you as you read them. This simple device will clear up many difficulties. Only after it has failed should you tum to the glossary or notes.
A Note About Tragedy
Most plays are not worth reading. This, we think, is because they are incomplete. They were not meant to be readthey were meant to be acted. There are many great expository works, and many great novels, stories, and lyric poems, but there are only a few great plays. However, those few-the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes, the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere's comedies, the works of a very few modems-are very great indeed, for they contain within them