The truth is that while I found it to be a fascinating story, my brain refuses to fully process stage plays. I worry too much about setting the stage: the costumes, the painted cardboard backdrops, stage props... I worry over what kind of accent to properly hear the characters speaking in; who I will cast as characters. Eventually I finish getting the stage set and the costumes designed and I bark orders to an actor to the right, similar to the way a director of a movie would. I begin reading. It's a conversation between two people and I'm okay for the most part, pausing slightly to make a few minor adjustments to setting and such. Once a third character chimes in though, forget it. I don't want to continually read each name before each section of dialogue, so I skip them. It is not a good thing to skip the names of the speakers because at some point it occurs to me that I have no clue who's saying what. Now I'm irritated. I begin again at the beginning in hopes that this time I get a little further along.
To be fair, while I repeat this same scenario with all plays, there are some that I don't get quite so hung up on. Perhaps it is the Shakespearean influence that I have trouble grasping. As an English major, it is sacrilegious and I'm probably going to literary hell for saying so, but I loathe reading Shakespeare. Granted, his tales are fascinating, with impressive psychological force, and huge, brilliant characters. Maybe I dislike that he is often regarded as the single-most important literary figure. ever. Maybe I hate that his works are put on a pedestal where other works are forced in comparison and never really allowed to measure up. Or, maybe it's nothing more than the shallow dislike of the painful reading and interpretation of "ye olde English".
All I know is that my grade is thankful that Death and the King's Horseman is the only play for this term.
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