Shakespeare verses the actor

My first Shakespeare encounter came in the fall of sixth grade.  My English teacher took the class to see the play King Lear, a tragedy detailing a king’s internal downfall and dissolve.  Until that point, Shakespeare remained an esoteric topic discussed by only the most educated and capable, and I had no intention of fighting my way into a group of the elite.  However, I realized people actually paid to see these plays so it must be at least decent.  
All excitement I had for the play instantly vanished when I saw a picture of Shakespeare's famous, prodigious forehead gleaming between the wisps of his ugly brown hair.  His facial expression suggested an unbalanced blend of pretentiousness and competence, but there was no escaping one fact: the man was ugly.  

One could imagine how exponentially my excitement grew when I found out the play would be performed solely by one actress.  I couldn't bare it.  She played the king, his three daughters, and about three other prominent noblemen.  However, ten minutes into the play, the actress seemed to morph into seven distinct characters with distinct personalities.  The striking part about it was the actress’s ineptitude in attempting to seamlessly switch between the characters.  In fact, the production of the play seemed mediocre at best, yet I was easily able distinguish every single character.  The capacity to distinguish stemmed from Shakespeare's unmatched ability to create such expressive, diacritic characters.  For example, Shakespeare's depiction of Iago in the play Othello is that of a ruthless sociopath who poisons people and their relationships for petty revenge and self gain.  The intentions of each Shakespearean character surface through the temperament and dialog of the characters themselves so clearly visual aids aren't even necessary.  Without being visually capable of separating each character (God help that poor actress), one could tell who the actress was playing simply by her actions and the words she spoke.  The moral of this Shakespearean experience is that essentially Shakespeare creates a world of his own through his creation of each individual character through dialog and screenplay, not the actor's imitation of it.  While good acting obviously enhances the quality of a Shakespearean play, I would argue the depth and meaning lies within each individual character's intentions through his or her words and actions.  Variations of Shakespearean plays come and go but each play's true meaning remains with the screenplay Shakespeare wrote.