ariza wrote:I am a self proclaimed Bard nerd.
You know I havent read the Bard at all. Nothing beyond "Julius Caesar" that I loved. Is it true that you cant aspire to write in English without reading the Bard?
All this time I have been hiding behind the fact that Drama needs to be seen and not read. Do you agree? In any case its time to dust that tome.
No, I don't think that's true. You can certainly write well without having read Shakespeare, but I think you'd write better and your understanding of language and the timelessness of his stories would give you a more well-rounded approach to writing. Just my opinion, though.
And yes, all drama is better seen than read, but once one has done both, you can get a better sense of what the writer is doing with language when you can see it on the page and also how different people manipulate the inflections and presentation of the words in different productions. I think you should both read and watch drama, not just one or the other. It leads to a much richer experience.