However great Shakespeare’s genius is, it doesn’t help to treat him as a sort of holy fool or a Messianic seer. He was a playwright, and an actor, and a theatre manager. He was utterly pragmatic; his plays wouldn’t and couldn’t have worked if they had been shrouded in obscurity and abstract conceits. And remember that in spite of the play being in verse, each line is characterized. No two characters speak the same.
From National Service: Diary of a Decade in the National Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2003) by Sir Richard Charles Hastings Eyre CBE, British theatre and opera director, and winner of five Olivier Awards.
Atkins Bookshelf 