The weakness and strength of plays (in books):

The weakness of plays (in books) :

The weakness in plays is that, because the attention of the reader is so focused on what the speaking actor is saying or thinking directly, the staging of the setting through didascalies which can be an important narrative support are little conceptualized by that reader. They seem insignificant and are very quickly read because the dialogues and the soliloquies all seem to be the main course.

Unless the actors explicitly vocalize the peculiarities of those settings, it would go unnoticed by the average reader. (If they’re not inside a theater).

The strength of plays (in books) :

In plays, the character is able to speak with a thematic cadence omnipresently, without having the playwright creating a narrative plot line just to justify his unusual cadence.

Acting, in itself, is already the justification; and plays are in this way the only medium where this is possible.

For textual stories who seek to make the audience apprehend thematic sensations at every step of the piece, this is highly important as it saves a tremendous amount of time for the experience and makes the narrative less bloated.