Shakespeare’s comedies
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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
StructureFrom 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!