Just a Piece of Paper III

This is the last installment to the Piece of Paper series ( Piece of Paper post 1; Post 2) and the finishing of my thoughts on character development, exaggeration, and using of voice and writing and value.

Shakespeare was an excellent writer and character creator. Some of his characters are simple, without many folds, and therefore they seem more shallow. But the good part about these characters is that we can still see the important parts and because of their bluntness and Shakespeare's bluntness we see the big picture a little more easily. Shakespeare can also create the intensely intricate characters with many, many, hidden folds and deep meanings. Hamlet, for example, is a confusing character because he seems to have control over his mind at some points and seems to be crazy at others. He has so much going on that we, as readers, don't even understand his character completely.

Changing focus for a moment, I ask this question: what is expected of a stage performance based on exaggeration to suspend belief and spectacle? In a theater, an audience member is expecting certain things. They want to go and imagine that the characters are in a certain place, not acting but living. So what do actors need to do to provide that suspense of disbelief? If they walked around like normal people on a stage, just living their lives, it would be boring, slow, and it would look like nothing is happening. People in a big theater at the back have to be able to see what's going on as well, so actors have to exaggerate their motions, exaggerate their voice fluctuations and the story has to be too exciting for real life. People read a story or watch a play to get out of the real world, but they also want to be able to relate to the characters and the things that are going on. So writers and actors must make real life things bigger, smaller, louder, more magical than they would in real life. They also have to put in real characteristics and situations but those things need to stand out in a way that makes it seem special and more real.
Then the problem of overacting comes in. How much is too much? In the simplification of things, subtlety is lost and that makes it look too fake, and too exaggerated, and too good to be true. When someone is sarcastic all the time, you just stop believing them.
Shakespeare does it perfectly in his writing, although the acting part is up to the actors. His writing is believable to a point that we enjoy reading his plays because we see similarities to ourselves. We can relate to them and use them as examples. And this is why Shakespeare is quoted in General Conference: his writing is applicable to our lives, his characters have characteristics that each of us can see in ourselves and others, and his stories are interesting because they could almost be true. Shakespeare is universal.