steepholm

I should have added "emotionally" to "intellectually and aesthetically stimulating" above, I think. Undoubtedly the great tragedies are bigger emotional and aesthetic experiences than something like Richard II (and you seem to have experienced catharsis, you lucky dog, I never have. Still waiting for the right production to come along. It would help if I actually went to the theatre a bit more instead of grumbling that it'll be full of people rustling wrappers and pontificating out of the programme notes until all the tickets are sold out) but what makes them such big things, the transcendence and inevitability and all that, is what makes them not kinetic, for me; they wring you out, but the experience is complete and in a sense self-contained. Whereas something that might be lesser in emotional and aesthetic terms gets into the nooks and crannies of your psyche. Does this make any sense at all?