It's really no secret that plays are easier to read than book literature. As we're reading the Crucible, and I'm in my living room at midnight with 40 pages to go, I find myself thinking "Well hey, at least it's not Great Expectations".
So why, exactly, are plays so much faster and easier to read? The answer can be found in the secret to all literary authors' successes: DESCRIPTIONS.
Novels will go into epic descriptions multiple pages long about the character's feelings or surroundings. The action of the story is sprinkled in amongst these block texts of boredom. Plays are written solely to progress the plot. They have to be, because characters can't exactly turn out an analysis-ready, 5 minute long monologue describing a tree their cat is in. Let alone the image of the poor kitten sitting up in the branches with no want or way to get down.
Any non-active parts of plays will be written in the italicized stage directions, but you don't really have to read those. I never do unless I'm trying to block a scene or something. You can read the dialog in a play and get as much information about the story, but in much less time. Most lines are also easy to understand, because the actor has to be able to grasp their meaning quickly so that they can play the character.
And this is why plays are much easier to read than novels.
Nice job breaking down some of the features of reading a dramatic work as opposed to a novel. I tend to prefer reading novels, even though they take longer. The play leaves a great deal to the imagination, which is sometimes a good thing. But I actually like some of the beautiful language that can appear in a nice piece of descriptive prose. As a side note, while I absolutely love Great Expectations, I will admit that it is a novel that is quite verbose and not as tightly written as it could be. But, as I have mentioned on another post, Dickens was paid by the page (as was Fyodor Dostoevsky, incidentally).
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