What Makes a ‘Play’ a Play?

One thing you need to remember when approaching a play is that it’s supposed to be a performance. When studying plays, most of the time you will be studying a play script. A play script is a written version of the performance, similar to a screenplay (used for film). I tend to view plays as a simplified version of a novel. For example, if Shakespeare was a novelist, the opening of The Tempest could have been: