Cheryl E. Merritt
When Rome declined as an empire the whole business of drama went into hiding for a great length of time. Eventually the dramatic mood was reborn, this time evolving out of the liturgical services of the church. Around the beginning of the fifteenth century emerged the Morality Play. It differed from the earlier religious dramas because it contained certain abstract passions, vices, and virtues that were presented on stage by actors in bizarre costumes. By the late sixteenth century, Elizabethan drama had become the best in the history of world literature. How easy it is to mention Shakespeare.
Some believe that plays are no more suited for silent reading than music scores. However, drama is conceived and recorded in words. Every reader of a play is a self-appointed director with a theater in his own mind. Before you know it you are living the story—laughing, loving, hating, struggling, and winning! All of the adventure, all of the romance, all of the excitement one lacks in daily life are in drama.
The stage performer establishes between himself and his audience a contact as real as electricity.
“All the worlds a stage . . .” and most of the men and women living in it are stage struck. The term “stage-struck” implies a form of universal madness which does not exist in any other calling, I never heard of a banker who is “bank-struck”.