If you have ever opened a play meaning to read it and stalled on the first few pages, not knowing who is speaking or why a block of italicized text keeps interrupting the dialogue, there is one thing you need to hear first: the problem is not you. It is the format.
Why a play stops the people who read it
A novel was written for the eye to run alone across the page. A play was not. It was written to be heard, with people standing on a stage, saying those words out loud, to other people who were also there. The text presupposes a body, a voice, and an audience, and when it reaches you alone, on a page, with none of that, an entire part of the experience it was designed for is simply missing.
That is why the stage directions get in the way of silent reading. They are not part of anyone's speech, they are instructions for whoever is going to perform, a technical note that the eye of a novel reader is not trained to cross without stumbling. And that is also why the list of characters at the start does not help much: they are names without a face, without a voice, without a gesture, handed to you all at once, before you have any reason yet to remember a single one of them.
The path that opens the text
If you open the text and stall on the stage directions and on who is speaking, do not force it. Go in through the performance first. In the case of Hamlet, that means watching Kenneth Branagh's film, the only version that carries the whole play to the screen, without cutting entire acts the way almost every other adaptation does. Then come back to the text. You will recognize the scenes, you will hear the voice that was missing as you read, and the text opens up.
This is not a lazy shortcut. It is the natural order of a text that was born for the stage before it was born for the page. Watching before reading does not skip the hard part, it gives the text back the dimension it always had, the one that solitary, silent reading takes away from it.
A method, not a crutch
The same path works for any play, not only for Hamlet. If you stall on a text written for the stage, look for a staging that carries the whole work, without major cuts, watch it, and only then go back to the text. You are not compensating for a difficulty of your own. You are reading the text the way it asks to be read, with the voice and the body it always presupposed, even when you are alone, in silence, with the book in your hands.
Readings from Nous
Read the classics in depth
Our list of more than 230 recommended books, commented and organized by theme, so you don't read in the dark.
See recommended readingsFrequently asked questions
Why is it difficult to read a play?
Because the text was not written to be read in silence, it was written to be heard, with people standing and saying those words. The headings and the list of characters at the beginning get in the way for exactly this reason: they are stage instructions, not prose made for the eye to run through.
Is it worth watching an adaptation before reading the text?
Yes, and it is not a lazy shortcut: it is the natural order of a text made for the stage. Watching first helps you recognize the scenes, and that is where the text opens up.
Does this method only work for Shakespeare?
No. It applies to any play: the text was written to be performed, so seeing a performance before reading helps to hear the voices that the text presupposes, regardless of the author.
Continue: Hamlet, by Shakespeare: Summary and Analysis · Hamlet's ghost: purgatory or hell? · Why Hamlet Doesn't Kill Claudius Praying · Why is Macbeth "the Scottish play"?
Source class: Hamlet, de William Shakespeare