I wish there were buzzfeed-esque articles telling people why my plays are brilliant, and why people should appreciate them. It seems to work out well for nearly everything else. “Why Redgrin Grumble’s speech on the Dog Channel is important, and how it’s changing America.”
Have you ever noticed the endless line of people ready to explain why Tom Stoppard’s deliberately esoteric plays are made better by their deliberately inpenetrable material and the library of information you must consume in order to appreciate them? But when it comes to Shakespeare, or really anything else, we must be in a perpetual state of apology. Terribly sorry Sir, let me dumb that down for you a little bit more. Because of the ironic success of Rozencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (and make no mistake, that was very much an early example of Hipsterism), audiences are expected to put in hours of work before, during, and sometimes even after a Stoppard performance, and if they don’t well they’re just philistines. And Stoppard’s tedious research-papers-onstage continue to get produced. But Verse, well, let me get all those scary words out of the way for you, Sir.
I suppose it’s my fault for choosing what inspires me, as we all do.