Fiction still shapes our ideas about places we've never been to and people we haven't met. It expands the mind. The very act of reading a fiction compels us to inhabit another world than the one around us. This ability to see through another's eyes is an adult skill, increasing our capacity for empathy and also our power. Poetry leads us on short trips into introspection, memory, and sometimes daring juxtapositions.
Plays are usually more social, involving relationships between characters.
We may identify with one or another character, or remain a spectator at an arc of human striving. Some plays, such as Roots , have had enormous impact on our society's attitudes. Too often, reading a play in a book is a pale substitute for the catharsis that a performance can bring. It connects us to others whom we haven't met yet. Knowledge of the classics may be handy for sparkling conversation at a party, but more important are the shared ideas that pose eternal questions.