William Shakespeare's Comedies
Shakespeare's comedies can be recognized in terms of plot, structure and characters. We can see that Shakespearean comedies follow the same structural pattern, a basic plot on which the play is based. For example, a key feature of all comedies is that they depend upon the resolution of their plots. However, Shakespeare's comedies are distinguishable, as some are classed as comic dramas and others as romantic comedies. In comic drama, there is usually a motif of a place where reality and the unreal merge, the roles of characters are reversed and identities are mistaken or lost. This place may take on the form of a feast or celebration, or it may be presented as a place segregated from the normal society, such as the wood in A Midsummer Night's Dream. When scenes are set in this place, the ordinary rules of life and society do not apply. There is always an experience of chaos, which must be resolved in order for the play to become a true comedy.
William Shakespeare's plays come in many forms. There are histories, tragedies, comedies and tragic comedies. Among the most popular are the comedies which are full of laughter, irony, satire and wordplay. Many times the question is asked: what makes a play a comedy instead of a tragedy. Shakespeare's comedies often use puns, metaphors and insults to provoke 'thoughtful laughter'. The action is often strained by artificiality, especially elaborate and contrived endings. Disguises and mistaken identities are often very common. Opposed to that are the tragedies, where the reader would find death, heartbreak, and more serious plots and motives. The plot is very important in Shakespeare's comedies. It is often very convoluted, twisted and confusing, and extremely hard to follow. Other characteristics of Shakespearean comedy are the themes of love and friendship, played within a courtly society. Songs often sung by a jester or a fool, parallel the events of the plot. Minor characters, which add flavor to the plot, are often inserted into the storyline. Love provides the main ingredient. If the lovers are unmarried when the play opens, they either have not met or there is some obstacle to their relationship. Examples of these obstacles are familiar to every reader of Shakespeare: the slanderous tongues which nearly wreck love in "Much Ado About Nothing", the father insistent upon his daughter marrying his choice, as in "A Midsummer Nights Dream", or the confusion of husbands in "The Comedy of Errors".
...ut Nothing is an extremely fast paced and witty play, Shakespeare very much has love as his central theme. There are two very different, yet equally compelling relationships that are explored in depth. They run through the play concurrently, allowing the reader to compare and contrast the different facets and complexities between the two. The playwright’s rich understanding of relationships, and particularly his understanding of the fact that love is not always as formulaic as many a writer would have us believe, makes for a fascinating read. In fact, by directly comparing a realistic couple, full of real world self doubt and a fear of rejection with a very stereotypical love-at-first-sight type of relationship, Shakespeare is possibly making the point that love and relationships have more depth than is often given credit.
William Shakespeare is really famous for his writings, especially Romeo and Juliet. A pair of two star crossed lovers take place, on their mission to unite two houses, Capulets and Montagues, once and for all. In the play Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare presents a lot of paradoxes. This provides a lot of contrast to the text and allows readers to think harder and better understand the intricacies of this writing. In this play, there are many paradoxical themes expressed through the text for example good versus evil, love versus hate, and many more. All these paradoxes are communicated through figurative language, characterization, sound devices, and literary foils. These are literary devices that authors use to help readers to visualize
Shakespeare's comedies A Midsummers Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing have many parallels while Measure for Measure is a problem play with a completely different tone. Comparing and contrasting these three plays provides insights into the views of Shakespeare concerning comedy.
Shakespeare’s plays show the complexity of human beings. Everyone is different in reactions, actions, and thought. Shakespeare explores various themes throughout his writing career. Each play is unique, and their themes are handled in a very distinct way as Shakespeare writes each work with great care. Two major themes are appearance versus reality and relationship between motive and will; Othello, Hamlet, and Henry IV, Part 1 all portray these two themes in similar and different ways.
William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet In act 1 scene 5 Capulet has thrown a party at his house. Romeo and
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would
Perhaps the first and most obvious effect of Shakespeare's use of comedy in the two Henry IV plays is the resulting diversity of characters. The plays can be seen to be divided into three general scenes or settings, the court, the tavern, and the rebel's camp, and it is largely the tavern scenes which introduce characters not found in the plays' historical bases. In doing so, Shakespeare of course draws in a more diverse audience, who can perhaps see something of themselves in the full variety of society's characters found in I Henry IV and II Henry IV. Shakespeare's mastery of language and dialect help to acheive this, for his characters' speech resounds with realism. The tavern crowd's lines, for example, are filled with colloquialisms and double-entendres:
in the bottom of a tomb. ’O God, I have an ill divining soul! Methinks
In stark contrast to the dark and tragic "Othello," is one of Shakespeare’s lightest and funniest comedies, "Twelfth Night." The theme of love is presented in a highly comical manner. Shakespeare, however, once again proves himself a master by interweaving serious elements into humorous situations. "Twelfth Night" consists of many love triangles, however many of the characters who are tangled up in the web of love are blind to see that their emotions and feelings toward other characters are untrue. They are being deceived by themselves and/or the others around them.
Tragedy, irony and modernism are only a few interpretations of the valued play The Taming of the Shrew by the respected writer William Shakespeare. However, one of the most intriguing and popular of these analyses is comedy. Shakespeare is recognized for writing several plays with comedic genres, a few of which include Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors. Comedy, being a complex genre, is composed of many different concepts. This particular play can be interpreted as a Shakespearian comedy, a screwball comedy, a farce, or slapstick.
What is so interesting about Shakespeare's first play, The Comedy of Errors, are the elements it shares with his last plays. The romances of his final period (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest) all borrowed from the romantic tradition, particularly the Plautine romances. So here, as in the later plays, we have reunions of lost children and parents, husbands and wives; we have adventures and wanderings, and the danger of death (which in this play is not as real to us as it is in the romances). Yet, for all these similarities, the plot of The Comedy of Errors is as simple as the plots of the later plays are complex. It is as though Shakespeare's odyssey through the human psyche in tragedy and comedy brought him back to his beginnings with a sharper sense of yearning, poignancy, and the feeling of loss. But to dismiss this play as merely a simplistic romp through a complicated set of maneuvers is to miss the pure theatrical feast it offers on the stage - the wit and humor of a master wordsmith, the improbability of a plot that sweeps...
Use of Humor in Romeo and Juliet & nbsp; Romeo and Juliet is one of Shakespeare's most famous plays. One. could give many reasons as to why this play became such a huge success, but one of the most important reasons could be the use of humour in the play. The main reason for doing this could be to relieve the tensions in the play. and to entertain and keep the Elizabethan audience interested. &
Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night revolves around a love triangle that continually makes twists and turns like a rollercoaster, throwing emotions here and there. The characters love each another, but the common love is absent throughout the play. Then, another character enters the scene and not only confuses everyone, bringing with him chaos that presents many different themes throughout the play. Along, with the emotional turmoil, each character has their own issues and difficulties that they must take care of, but that also affect other characters at same time. Richard Henze refers to the play as a “vindication of romance, a depreciation of romance…a ‘subtle portrayal of the psychology of love,’ a play about ‘unrequital in love’…a moral comedy about the surfeiting of the appetite…” (Henze 4) On the other hand, L. G. Salingar questions all of the remarks about Twelfth Night, asking if the remarks about the play are actually true. Shakespeare touches on the theme of love, but emphases the pain and suffering it causes a person, showing a dark and dismal side to a usually happy thought.
Shakespeare craftily uses music and poetry to guide the audience through the play and give them an inkling of what is to come, if the audience chooses to play close attention. However, it is not always clear what the song means and, depending on the character delivering the song or poem, comes off as more comedic than meaningful to the performance. By the end of the play, the audience has accepted that music and poetry are just as much themes in the play as disguise and love, but are blended so painstakingly that neither poetry or love overshadow anything in the performance.
England's most talented and well know poet and dramatist was born on April 23, 1564, at Stratford-upon-Avon, located in the cetre of England. His father, John, was a glove-maker and wool dealer involved with money lending. His mother Mary Arden was the daughter of a Farmer. William was the third out of eight children whom all died young. His father became Mayor in 1568, after serving on the town council for many years.