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!