"A central part of a play's meaning is the way it was originally designed to work on stage."

William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Sophocles Oedipus the King have long been included on academic lists for scholarly study as literary texts. As someone who has studied both texts in just the manner Hornby mentions, I would suggest that what is lost when a scholar treats a play text as literature is precisely that `central part of the play's meaning' which is illuminated by consideration of how a play was `designed to work on stage'. I intend to look at the crucial opening moments of each play, heeding Hornby's words, and keeping the text's status as `pretext' to an eventual performance very much at the forefront of my analysis.

Sophocles' Oedipus...