This feels very counterintuitive to the kinds of logical assumptions that one normally makes during LSAT questions. In literally any other question we would probably be assumed to know that an actor would have a copy of a script. It's like saying you can assume a lawyer has a law degree. We don't KNOW, per se, but common knowledge and ways of the world so strongly contradict the idea that an actor wouldn't have a copy of the script that I don't know what I'm supposed to gather from getting it wrong.
I mean the stimulus says that the person who undertook the abridgement did not have a copy of Hamlet, Hamlet is a play so the likely assumption is that a written copy = a script. Therefore, whoever wrote the abridgment probably memorized it. As most spectators would see it once, it is likely an actor who knows it well.
Thats how I reasoned it and it feels very LSAT-like to me
For me, what works when something feels counterintuitive, is that I picture the stimulus as existing in its own world. The world might resemble ours, but it is not 100% the same.
This is really great advice! I ran into this problem with this question while thinking, "why would an actor not have a copy of the script", as someone who grew up a theater kid LOL.
As a further explanation of the point above, this is also talking about an abridgment made in the 17th century and not in our modern world. At the time, actors were actually not given the whole script and actually just their lines with a few words before as a cue in. Just another example of why you can't let your personal experience and knowledge create sub-conscious assumptions that will affect how you answer the question!
As someone who acted in Hamlet and many other Shakespeare plays, we always get a full script so it was unreasonable to assume an actor did not have a copy of the play.
I agree. You're not supposed to dispute the truth of a premise, but this is an answer choice, so you need to have some level of outside knowledge to apply it to the premises. I also don't know what an abridgment is. I thought vocabulary wasn't supposed to hinder you on this test but I feel like it would have helped to know.
Actually none of the actors would have had an actual copy. They had excellent memories and Shakespearens know that the actors had to memorize their lines in a day and were likely to only have their own lines. Also technically a spectator would have been able to memorize all of the lines easier because they would have likely been coming to do that. Many of Shakespeare's plays have two versions of the play because one was likely to be closest to the original or the original and the other was likely to be memorized by someone in the audience to print. If you take and read both, the differences between the two are very minor. However, as far as answering this question on the actual LSAT the reason I would argue C is more correct is simply because we know ONE characters lines were good and it can be assumed that an actor would remember his lines almost perfectly and be more likely to only vaguely remember his co-actors lines.
Is this reasonable to assume? Perhaps I'm alone in being rusty about my knowledge about the production of 17th century plays? Come on... Something about not needing to bring in niche outside knowledge to find the correct answer, right?
Also, not that it's particularly important given the above, but the printing press was apparently invented in 1440. So, why wouldn't an actor have a copy?
The assumption I made was they did have a full script, but the actor merely memorized their part and maybe cues around their parts (hence the perfect speech that, I also assumed, they performed but nothing else).
it is more reasonable to think that an actor memorized his part very accurately, due to how many times he possibly practiced them, and not have given as much mind to the other parts, than an onlooker remembering those lines perfectly, when we can't really assume they even had a script of the lines to look at after they had seen the play - or clearly, even a copy of Hamlet to read after.
I didn't know when the printing press came out, nor did I know in the 1600s actors did not commonly get a script. I feel like background knowledge is almost required for this. If it said earlier I may have thought differently but I think this question is not great because it requires knowledge of when scripts weren't commonly used.
Another way to think about this is that the actor no longer has their script (gave it back at the end of the play, lost it over time, etc) but has much better knowledge of their own character's lines because they had to study, memorize, and perform them. To me it makes little sense that someone who had a script to look at would have prepared an abridgement described this way, so it follows that there must be a reason someone would know one character's lines better than the others. The fact that the actor spent significant time memorizing one character's lines requires fewer assumptions than the other answers in which the author does not have a copy of hte script.
Exactly! I got this question wrong because I assumed to be an actor in the play that you would need a script... how was I supposed to know that isn't the case
I'm not a fan of assuming that because it's in the 17th century then it's unlikely the actor would have a written copy. The printing press was already widespread, so why wouldn't there be written material? I see no reason to believe it'd be rare enough that an actor can't find a copy, even if it's one document traveling with a troupe. You might as well say it's a massive assumption that the actor can read.
C is still the most strongly supported answer because the actor would know the one speech by heart whereas you can assume the audience member, even focusing on this one speech, wouldn't know it as well - and there's no reason to assume they'd know it any better than the rest of the play.
exactly! But that took so long for me to realize in my blind review. Anytime I get caught up in a crazy assumption, I need to accept it's POE time, because C is as you said the most supported, obviously, once you measure support for the other choices. 1/2 supported is stronger than most weak/no support, or maybe plausible.
Just be like me and skip it every single time then.
Lol, half kidding but also as an over-thinker I think it's going to be key to learn how to trust your instincts in order to be successful on the test. We only get so much time! You've got this
I feel like on many other LR questions, making the assumption C did would be characterized as being too extreme or unsubstantiated by the text. There is nothing that alludes to 17th century printing being less common for actors than the present day.
Yeah, it's hilarious that JY tried to use this question to show us the "unity" of Logical Reasoning when it literally forces us to break at least one of our cardinal rules for approaching LR. To pick C, we'd have to either: A) make an assumption that's totally unsupported by the text, or B) bring in our own outside knowledge of that particular time period.
Yes, an actor may still be aware of all the other parts but typically not in as much detail as their own part. In the text, "slipshod handling" are key indicators that they possess some knowledge of the overall play but it's perhaps heedless compared to the knowledge of their own role.
Oh, I did a play in secondary school before, and I didn't care about the other parts that weren't my lines much. I only memorized the lines of my fellow actors that went just before my part. So I think C comports with reality the most.
A. def not Shakespeare, the stim said they're puzzled.
b. no idea about the intention of the person who abridged the show.
C. make sense. an actor who played a role in the play could have remembered only their lines while not the others, though I'm confused as to why the actor doesn't have a copy of Hamlet. I'll leave it for now.
D. Well, don't think an audience would have remembered one character's line only,
E. again we aren't sure about the intention of this abridgment, so let's go back to the C.
grrrr as a theatre kid this is fucking stupid. actors have copies of their plays... duh you have to bring in "outside knowledge" to answer this question which is against the rules of the lsat . boooooo
i chose d but i wanted to choose (c) and the only reason why i did was because as an actor, why wouldn't you have a copy of your own play? but that was a modern assumption on my part bc the assumption that the printing press was still not accessible enough to create copies of a play for every single actor part of the performance is still reasonable
If it's unreasonable to assume that a spectator cannot remeber a speech (one speech), then it's unreasonable to assume an actor does not have a copy of the play. Between C and D there are two competing unreasonable assumptions.
Also, no offense, but how the fuck am I supposed to recognize that the printing press was not invented in the 17th century.
I don't understand this. How can you not have a copy of the script if you are an actor who played a role in Hamlet? How did you memorize your lines?!!!! How would you know the lines of your other co actors if you didn't have a copy of the script?
it is just as possible that the actor did have a copy of hamlet as a spectator was obsessed with a certain actor... the only way to choose this answer is with outside knowledge of 17th century printing habits, which goes against everything we have learned about outside knowledge? idk this one seems like a stretch to me
@LiviaLSAT I was so-so on that part, what made it click for me was the only accurate rendering of a single character, made think right away of an actor.
I really hate this one for the amount of outside information you're supposed to bring in. How would I be know that no copies were made and even if there were, why would I assume anyone other then the actor(s) have one?
How is C possibly correct? It is COMPLETELY unreasonable to assume an actor of this play did not have a copy of this play. How could they complete a single scene, let alone the entire play, if they did not have a copy? D is much more accurate to me. A spectator likely does not have a copy but could, reasonably, go to see this play and only really remember their favorite parts. I understand this question and question type, but C as the correct answer just makes zero sense to me.
i thought the same thing, but it is the only answer that makes sense with the part about one character's speeches being well done and the others not being well done. i suppose it is possible that the actor only had his scenes, and not the entire play.
Okay, so there's no reason you need to know this for the LSAT (this isn't even why I got the question right), but when Shakespeare wrote his plays, he did not write out his scripts in their entirety for the use of the actors involved in production. Individual parts were written out and given to actors, with the preceding line written out so they would know when their dialogue would resume. From what I remember, complete copies of Shakespearean scripts were produced only after his death, when members of his theater company came together and wrote out the full scripts so that they could be preserved for posterity.
So think of it like this: the stimulus says "contains a very accurate rendition of the speeches of one of the characters" this means that the person who wrote the abridgment was able to accurately produce a copy of all or some of the speeches of one singular character, but not so much the rest. If an actor who played this character wrote the play, they would have memorized only their lines extensively in order to recite in the performance, and not necessarily the exact words of the other characters. hope this helps!
here is my thinking; i could be flawed in my reasoning here...but thought i would share
the stimulus alludes to the gap in the argument about why some characters are more developed than others. for me it was an immediate red flag(why is it only one character and the rest are half-handed). this has to mean that because they didn't own a copy of the full play they had to rely on passive knowledge to make their rendition. so i hunted for possible explanations will doing POE.
You are 100% correct about the script thing. However, as someone who actually worked in traditional shakespearian theater for years, Its an easy mistake to make. I had the same response as OP. I've spent so many years printing off copies of scripts for shakespearian actors that its literally ingrained into my head that the actor always has a copy (or multiple copies) of the script lying around. Maybe I struggled to put it in the proper historical context because its 1 am and im tired, but honestly this was a weird question where it was probably MORE difficult for thespians lol.
216 comments
whichever test writer is responsible for this question, please report to the front. i just want to talk
@clickbaitcowboy and throw some hands
This feels very counterintuitive to the kinds of logical assumptions that one normally makes during LSAT questions. In literally any other question we would probably be assumed to know that an actor would have a copy of a script. It's like saying you can assume a lawyer has a law degree. We don't KNOW, per se, but common knowledge and ways of the world so strongly contradict the idea that an actor wouldn't have a copy of the script that I don't know what I'm supposed to gather from getting it wrong.
Rant over.
I mean the stimulus says that the person who undertook the abridgement did not have a copy of Hamlet, Hamlet is a play so the likely assumption is that a written copy = a script. Therefore, whoever wrote the abridgment probably memorized it. As most spectators would see it once, it is likely an actor who knows it well.
Thats how I reasoned it and it feels very LSAT-like to me
For me, what works when something feels counterintuitive, is that I picture the stimulus as existing in its own world. The world might resemble ours, but it is not 100% the same.
This is really great advice! I ran into this problem with this question while thinking, "why would an actor not have a copy of the script", as someone who grew up a theater kid LOL.
As a further explanation of the point above, this is also talking about an abridgment made in the 17th century and not in our modern world. At the time, actors were actually not given the whole script and actually just their lines with a few words before as a cue in. Just another example of why you can't let your personal experience and knowledge create sub-conscious assumptions that will affect how you answer the question!
As someone who acted in Hamlet and many other Shakespeare plays, we always get a full script so it was unreasonable to assume an actor did not have a copy of the play.
I agree. You're not supposed to dispute the truth of a premise, but this is an answer choice, so you need to have some level of outside knowledge to apply it to the premises. I also don't know what an abridgment is. I thought vocabulary wasn't supposed to hinder you on this test but I feel like it would have helped to know.
Actually none of the actors would have had an actual copy. They had excellent memories and Shakespearens know that the actors had to memorize their lines in a day and were likely to only have their own lines. Also technically a spectator would have been able to memorize all of the lines easier because they would have likely been coming to do that. Many of Shakespeare's plays have two versions of the play because one was likely to be closest to the original or the original and the other was likely to be memorized by someone in the audience to print. If you take and read both, the differences between the two are very minor. However, as far as answering this question on the actual LSAT the reason I would argue C is more correct is simply because we know ONE characters lines were good and it can be assumed that an actor would remember his lines almost perfectly and be more likely to only vaguely remember his co-actors lines.
Is this reasonable to assume? Perhaps I'm alone in being rusty about my knowledge about the production of 17th century plays? Come on... Something about not needing to bring in niche outside knowledge to find the correct answer, right?
Also, not that it's particularly important given the above, but the printing press was apparently invented in 1440. So, why wouldn't an actor have a copy?
Agree. This question was a bs for me.
Which is more of a stretch:
1) the actors didnt have the script in 17C, OR
2) one guy really liked one specific character, hence knowing the lines.
like, come on.
The assumption I made was they did have a full script, but the actor merely memorized their part and maybe cues around their parts (hence the perfect speech that, I also assumed, they performed but nothing else).
I think it is reasonable to assume this was different in the 17th century lol
Remember from the earlier lessons that bringing in outside knowledge to determine your answer is a mistake the writers are trying to get you to make!
exactly. plus you never dispute the truthfulness of the premises
it is more reasonable to think that an actor memorized his part very accurately, due to how many times he possibly practiced them, and not have given as much mind to the other parts, than an onlooker remembering those lines perfectly, when we can't really assume they even had a script of the lines to look at after they had seen the play - or clearly, even a copy of Hamlet to read after.
I didn't know when the printing press came out, nor did I know in the 1600s actors did not commonly get a script. I feel like background knowledge is almost required for this. If it said earlier I may have thought differently but I think this question is not great because it requires knowledge of when scripts weren't commonly used.
Another way to think about this is that the actor no longer has their script (gave it back at the end of the play, lost it over time, etc) but has much better knowledge of their own character's lines because they had to study, memorize, and perform them. To me it makes little sense that someone who had a script to look at would have prepared an abridgement described this way, so it follows that there must be a reason someone would know one character's lines better than the others. The fact that the actor spent significant time memorizing one character's lines requires fewer assumptions than the other answers in which the author does not have a copy of hte script.
Exactly! I got this question wrong because I assumed to be an actor in the play that you would need a script... how was I supposed to know that isn't the case
Also a spectator could have just had a better impression of a character they liked and remembered their lines.
I viewed having a copy of hamlet, the actual play and a script of the play to be two different things.
True, but it that seems like a more farfetched assumption than the fact that an actor probably just focused on their lines and no one elses.
I'm not a fan of assuming that because it's in the 17th century then it's unlikely the actor would have a written copy. The printing press was already widespread, so why wouldn't there be written material? I see no reason to believe it'd be rare enough that an actor can't find a copy, even if it's one document traveling with a troupe. You might as well say it's a massive assumption that the actor can read.
C is still the most strongly supported answer because the actor would know the one speech by heart whereas you can assume the audience member, even focusing on this one speech, wouldn't know it as well - and there's no reason to assume they'd know it any better than the rest of the play.
exactly! But that took so long for me to realize in my blind review. Anytime I get caught up in a crazy assumption, I need to accept it's POE time, because C is as you said the most supported, obviously, once you measure support for the other choices. 1/2 supported is stronger than most weak/no support, or maybe plausible.
Blind review is an over thinkers worst nightmare. :(
sometimes I skip the blind review too because most of the time my first choice was right
Just be like me and skip it every single time then.
Lol, half kidding but also as an over-thinker I think it's going to be key to learn how to trust your instincts in order to be successful on the test. We only get so much time! You've got this
Literally
I feel like on many other LR questions, making the assumption C did would be characterized as being too extreme or unsubstantiated by the text. There is nothing that alludes to 17th century printing being less common for actors than the present day.
Yeah, it's hilarious that JY tried to use this question to show us the "unity" of Logical Reasoning when it literally forces us to break at least one of our cardinal rules for approaching LR. To pick C, we'd have to either: A) make an assumption that's totally unsupported by the text, or B) bring in our own outside knowledge of that particular time period.
Agreed, this question seems poorly written.
this is so fucking stupid
fuck this test
valid crash out, I feel you.
"What, you didn't know how rare books were in the 1600s? What are you, stupid or something?"
The target times on some of these questions are wild
But wouldn't an actor IN hamlet still be aware of all the other parts and possess some accuracy? It doesn't make sense to me that the answer is C?
I was thinking the same
Yes, an actor may still be aware of all the other parts but typically not in as much detail as their own part. In the text, "slipshod handling" are key indicators that they possess some knowledge of the overall play but it's perhaps heedless compared to the knowledge of their own role.
Oh, I did a play in secondary school before, and I didn't care about the other parts that weren't my lines much. I only memorized the lines of my fellow actors that went just before my part. So I think C comports with reality the most.
I used POE for the ACs.
A. def not Shakespeare, the stim said they're puzzled.
b. no idea about the intention of the person who abridged the show.
C. make sense. an actor who played a role in the play could have remembered only their lines while not the others, though I'm confused as to why the actor doesn't have a copy of Hamlet. I'll leave it for now.
D. Well, don't think an audience would have remembered one character's line only,
E. again we aren't sure about the intention of this abridgment, so let's go back to the C.
looks like C makes the most sense.
what the fuck man, how the fuck am i supposed to fucking know that about the fucking printing press. fuck the printing press. fuck the lsat.
I had C initially, but I figured, if he was an actor, why would he NOT have a copy of the play????
grrrr as a theatre kid this is fucking stupid. actors have copies of their plays... duh you have to bring in "outside knowledge" to answer this question which is against the rules of the lsat . boooooo
Got so frustrated I had to take a walk
i chose d but i wanted to choose (c) and the only reason why i did was because as an actor, why wouldn't you have a copy of your own play? but that was a modern assumption on my part bc the assumption that the printing press was still not accessible enough to create copies of a play for every single actor part of the performance is still reasonable
WHY WOULD AN ACTOR NOT HAVE A COPY OF THE PLAY??????
@Premiseprincess Actors back then didn't get copies of the play, they only got their own lines!
If it's unreasonable to assume that a spectator cannot remeber a speech (one speech), then it's unreasonable to assume an actor does not have a copy of the play. Between C and D there are two competing unreasonable assumptions.
Also, no offense, but how the fuck am I supposed to recognize that the printing press was not invented in the 17th century.
@CMas THISSSSS!
@CMas 100%. Gut said C at first but then I went between C and D because I started thinking about these exact assumptions.
I don't understand this. How can you not have a copy of the script if you are an actor who played a role in Hamlet? How did you memorize your lines?!!!! How would you know the lines of your other co actors if you didn't have a copy of the script?
@FranciscoLee My thoughts exactly :/
C got me because i thought "how on earth could a person in a play not have a copy of said play"?
it is just as possible that the actor did have a copy of hamlet as a spectator was obsessed with a certain actor... the only way to choose this answer is with outside knowledge of 17th century printing habits, which goes against everything we have learned about outside knowledge? idk this one seems like a stretch to me
@LiviaLSAT I was so-so on that part, what made it click for me was the only accurate rendering of a single character, made think right away of an actor.
@LiviaLSAT Yea, I forgot that it was set in the 17th century when looking at the answer choices. Makes more sense now when I think about it that way.
this assumption is not fair at all
fuck this guy shakespeare, never heard of em.
I really hate this one for the amount of outside information you're supposed to bring in. How would I be know that no copies were made and even if there were, why would I assume anyone other then the actor(s) have one?
How is C possibly correct? It is COMPLETELY unreasonable to assume an actor of this play did not have a copy of this play. How could they complete a single scene, let alone the entire play, if they did not have a copy? D is much more accurate to me. A spectator likely does not have a copy but could, reasonably, go to see this play and only really remember their favorite parts. I understand this question and question type, but C as the correct answer just makes zero sense to me.
i thought the same thing, but it is the only answer that makes sense with the part about one character's speeches being well done and the others not being well done. i suppose it is possible that the actor only had his scenes, and not the entire play.
Okay, so there's no reason you need to know this for the LSAT (this isn't even why I got the question right), but when Shakespeare wrote his plays, he did not write out his scripts in their entirety for the use of the actors involved in production. Individual parts were written out and given to actors, with the preceding line written out so they would know when their dialogue would resume. From what I remember, complete copies of Shakespearean scripts were produced only after his death, when members of his theater company came together and wrote out the full scripts so that they could be preserved for posterity.
So think of it like this: the stimulus says "contains a very accurate rendition of the speeches of one of the characters" this means that the person who wrote the abridgment was able to accurately produce a copy of all or some of the speeches of one singular character, but not so much the rest. If an actor who played this character wrote the play, they would have memorized only their lines extensively in order to recite in the performance, and not necessarily the exact words of the other characters. hope this helps!
here is my thinking; i could be flawed in my reasoning here...but thought i would share
the stimulus alludes to the gap in the argument about why some characters are more developed than others. for me it was an immediate red flag(why is it only one character and the rest are half-handed). this has to mean that because they didn't own a copy of the full play they had to rely on passive knowledge to make their rendition. so i hunted for possible explanations will doing POE.
You are 100% correct about the script thing. However, as someone who actually worked in traditional shakespearian theater for years, Its an easy mistake to make. I had the same response as OP. I've spent so many years printing off copies of scripts for shakespearian actors that its literally ingrained into my head that the actor always has a copy (or multiple copies) of the script lying around. Maybe I struggled to put it in the proper historical context because its 1 am and im tired, but honestly this was a weird question where it was probably MORE difficult for thespians lol.