Am I just jealous?

It's an alarming 31 years since I read anything with a view to studying it. Back then we read plays, novels and, of course, poems.
Now I still think the reading of plays is perverse and against everything the playwright intended. Language on the page can be pinned down like a moth and dissected until we know how it's constructed and classified so we know what it 's related to but that just leaves it as sterile and lifeless as a microscope slide. Hamlet's soliloquy does read beautifully but how much better is it when you hear the words spoken, interpreted? On the page 'Out, out damned spot' could be construed as an angry instruction to an erring pet but not when you see Lady Macbeth wringing those encrimsoned hands and hear the desperation and anguish in the voice. Since I left school therefore I have never read another play.
(Just to go off at a bit of a tangent here I learned with alarm that nowadays kids no longer read whole plays. Instead they watch a video of a performance and learn two 'key' scenes about which they answer questions and write essays. Now I don't want to get all 'Daily Mail' here but if that isn't dumbing down what is? Isn't it a bit hypocritical of me to complain about not reading whole plays right after saying that I think reading plays is perverse? Well of course it is, but if I had to plough through Julius Caesar, Henry IV parts one and two, Othello, Doctor Faustus and The Duchess of Malfi then I don't see why my kids can get away with reading two scenes from the The Tempest or The Merchant of Venice and claim they know the play!)