Shakespeare’s comedies
Liceo Laura Bassi
4° formers – scienze umane
The plays of William Shakespeare
were grouped into:
• Comedies
• Histories
• Tragedies
Shakespeare’s 17 comedies are the most
difficult to classify because they overlap in
style with other genres. Critics often
describe some plays as tragi-comedies
because they mix equal measures of
tragedy and comedy (see Much Ado about
Nothing).
• All's Well That Ends Well
• As You Like It
• The Comedy of Errors (is believed to be Shakespeare’s
earliest comedy, written around 1592)
• Cymbeline
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Measure for Measure
• The Merchant of Venice
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pericles Prince of Tyre
• Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest
• Twelfth Night
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• The Winter's Tale
Legacy
• Because of his humanist education,
Shakespeare was familiar with classical
(Greek and Latin) comedy
• The Latin comedies of Terence and
another Roman poet, Plautus (ca. 258?184 B.C.), were studied in Elizabethan
schools
Structure
From Terence and Plautus, Shakespeare learned how to
organize a plot in a way modern editors may represent as a
five-act structure:
1- A situation with tensions or implicit conflict
(Exposition)
2- Implicit conflict is developed (Rising Action)
3- Conflict reaches height; frequently an impasse
(Turning Point)
4- Things begin to clear up (Falling Action)
5- Problem is resolved, knots untied (Conclusion)
.
.
Structure
conflict
obstacles
obstacles
solution of conflict
Characters
From the works of Plautus and Terence, Shakespeare
learned to use certain stock characters such as
- the prodigal youth and his female love interest;
- "blocking figures" who provide the obstacle to
be overcome (ex.the senex), a parent or
guardian of the hero or heroine
- the shrewish wife, the pedant, the braggart
soldier (the miles gloriosus), the parasite,
clowns, outlaws, clever servants, female
confidantes.
Comedy:
• Is often set in an imaginary country
(ex.Illyria)
• Is similar to a fairy-tale
• Characters are true to life
• In Shakespeare’s comedies female
heroines are usually more important than
male heroes
• But in Shakespearian
time men played all the
roles even female ones
• In characters we can
see many mistakes
and faults
The two most important motives in
comedy:
1. Right of an individual to free choice of
love
2. Contrast between the appearance and
reality
• Shakespeare’s comedies are accompanied
by music and sometimes actors play music
instruments by themselves
• Songs are often sung by a jester or a fool;
parallel the events of the plot.
The main themes in Shakespeare’s
comedies are:
• Romantic love
• Friendship
Main features
• A struggle of old haters to overcome
difficulty, often presented by young people
• Separation and re-unification
• Mistaken identities
• A clever servant
• Heightened tensions, often within a couple
• Complex, intertwining plot
• Use of puns
Twelfth Night
• Twelfth Night is a wonderful romantic
comedy which was named after the
Twelfth Night Christmas holiday.
• First performed between 1599 and 1601
• It contains basic themes like: divided
twins, mistaken identity, true love
conquering, gender-crossing and love
madness.
• Orsino is a strong nobleman who lives in
the country of Illyria. He is madly in love
with the gorgeous lady Olivia.
• Viola is a young upper-class woman and
the main character of the play. She
represents herself as a man ‘Cesario’ and
goes to work for Orsino
and falls in love with him.
• Olivia is a good looking,
wealthy and noble
woman who lived in
Illyria . Orsino was in
love with her.
The Taming of the Shrew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY5GVqLKm5Q
HAPPY END
Thank you for your attention!