Why are Shakespeare's plays so 'wordy'?

Answer 1

Because they didn't have much in terms of setting and props to give you a scene, Shakespeare wrote in a ton of details - that way, the audience could know what was going on in the scene, and where they were, etc.

Answer 2

Shakespeare did not have the luxury of a movie camera. He could not project images for his audience to see, so he had to evoke them with words. The thrust stage on which his actors played was and is not suitable to complex scenery or sets, so again he used words to evoke these things.

Shakespeare himself bemoans the fact that he must try to excite the imaginations of his audience with his words in the prologue to his play Henry V. Ironically, that prologue is one of the most beautiful and evocative passages in any of the plays.

"O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend

The brightest heaven of invention,

A kingdom for a stage, princes to act

And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!

Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,

Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,

Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire

Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,

The flat unraised spirits that have dared

On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth

So great an object: can this cockpit hold

The vasty fields of France? or may we cram

Within this wooden O the very casques

That did affright the air at Agincourt?

O, pardon! since a crooked figure may

Attest in little place a million;

And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,

On your imaginary forces work.

Suppose within the girdle of these walls

Are now confined two mighty monarchies,

Whose high upreared and abutting fronts

The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder:

Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts;

Into a thousand parts divide one man,

And make imaginary puissance;

Think when we talk of horses, that you see them

Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth;

For 'tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings"