Shakespearean Comedies

Shakespearean Comedies

Traditionally, the plays of William Shakespeare have been grouped into three categories: tragedies, comedies, and histories.

"Comedy", in its Elizabethan usage, had a very different meaning from modern comedy. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays. Patterns in the comedies include movement to a "green world", both internal and external conflicts, and a tension between Apollonian and Dionysian values. Shakespearean comedies tend to also include:

* A struggle of young lovers to overcome difficulty, often presented by elders

* Separation and re-unification

* Mistaken identities

* A clever servant

* Heightened tensions, often within a family

* Multiple, intertwining plots

* Frequent punning

Several of Shakespeare's comedies, such as Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well, have an unusual tone with a difficult mix of humour and tragedy which has led them to be classified as problem plays. It is not clear whether the uneven nature of these dramas is due to an imperfect understanding of Elizabethan humour and society, a fault on Shakespeare's part, or a deliberate attempt by him to blend styles and subvert the audience's expectations.

Shakespearean Comedies

Shakespearean Comedies

The Plays - The Comedies

William Shakespeare's plays come in many forms. There are histories, tragedies, comedies and tragicomedies. 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? Comedies treat subjects lightly, meaning that they don't treat seriously such things as love. 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.

The plot is very important in Shakespeare's comedies. It is often very convoluted, twisted and confusing, and extremely hard to follow. Other character- istics 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. Foil and stock characters 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 expulsion of the rightful Duke's daughter in 'As You Like It'.

Shakespeare uses many predictable patterns in his plays. The hero rarely appears in the opening lines; however, we hear about him from other characters. He often does not normally make an entrance for at least a few lines into the play, if not a whole scene. The hero is also virtuous and strong but always possesses a character flaw.

In the comedy itself, Shakespeare assumes that we know the basic plot and he jumps right into it with little or no explanation. Foreshadowing and foreboding are put in the play early and can be heard throughout the drama. All Shakespearean comedies have five acts. The climax of the play is always during the third act.

Shakespearean comedies also contain a wide variety of characters. Shakespeare often introduces a character and then discards him, never to be seen again during the play. Shakespeare's female leads are usually described as petite and often assume male disguises. Often, foul weather parallels the emotional state of the characters. The audience is often informed of events before the characters and when a future meeting is to take place it usually doesn't happen immediately. Character names are often clues to their roles and personalities, such as Malvolio from 'Twelfth Night' and Bottom in 'A Midsummer Nights Dream'.

Many themes are repeated throughout Shakespeare's comedies. One theme is the never-ending struggle between the the forces of good and evil. Another theme is that love has profound effects and that people often hide behind false faces.

The comedies themselves can be sub-categorised as tragicomedies, romantic comedies, comedies of justice and simple entertaining comedies with good wholesome fun.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' was written in 1596. It has become one of Shakespeare's most fond comedies. It makes fun of everything from love at first sight to realistic staging. The play refers to "fair vestal throned by the west" which was once thought to have been a polite acknowledgement of the Queen's presence in the audience. The play was first printed in a quarto edition in 1600.

'Much Ado About Nothing' is a romantic comedy about a love relationship. It has a basic plot that's more orthodox than those of most of Shakespeare's plays. It's about two strong personalities who see each other as combatants rather than partners. The play exploits games of verbal punning and backchat between two reluctant lovers. 'Much Ado About Nothing' first appeared in a quarto 1599.

'Twelfth Night' is the most intricate of Shakespeare's great middle-period comedies. Written in 1601 it plays the familiar games of the time with boys playing girls who dress as boy pages. It is also filled with confusions of identity and memorable verbal put-downs. The play was not printed until the First Folio of 1623.

'The Winter's Tale' is a late tragicomedy written between 1609 -1610. It ranges through sixteen years in time, marked by the choric figure of Time himself and through a fantastic geographical range from Sicily to Bohemia. Shakespeare took this story, which shows the healing and restorative power of love, from an old romance. The play was printed originally in the First Folio of 1623.

'The Merry Wives of Windsor', written some time between 1597 and 1599, is the only comedy that Shakespeare set in his own time and country. For all the London scenes with Falstaff in the history plays, Shakespeare usually chose to set his comedies abroad. The use of local settings was still very new in the plays of this time. The play is an exciting piece of work, full of eccentric characters and slapstick comedy. The play first appeared in a memorial version in 1602 written down largely from memory. A better text appeared in the First Folio.

Shakespearean Tragedy

Shakespearean Tragedy

"A Shakespearean tragedy is a five act play ending in the death of most of the major characters." 

This statement with others of its kind may accurately describe many of Shakespeare's plays, but if we are looking for the essence of Shakespearean tragedy we must look in an entirely different realm. We cannot merely list the literary devices used, find the ones common to all of Shakespeare's tragedies, and call this collection their essence. We recognize tragedy in literature because we find that it corresponds to a sense of the tragic within us.

The essence of Shakespeare's tragedies is the expression of one of the great paradoxes of life. We might call it the paradox of disappointment. Defeat, shattered hopes, and ultimately death face us all as human beings. They are very real, but somehow we have the intuitive feeling that they are out of place. They seem to be intruders into life. Tragic literature confronts us afresh with this paradox and we become fascinated by it.

From this viewpoint we must look at the literary techniques in the plays not as definitive elements of tragedy but as expressions of it. Thus, hypothetically, someone could discover a long lost Shakespearean play that could truly be considered a tragedy yet lack any or all of the tragic devices common to Shakespeare's existing tragedies. The fact is, though, that certain literary devices recur regularly. Hence we may infer that these are particularly useful devices for expressing tragedy, or at least that they were particularly useful to Shakespeare.

Let us consider several characteristics common to Shakespeare's four great tragedies. Each play is especially concerned with one central figure or tragic protagonist. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth are the protagonists of their respective plays. It is significant that each is the story of a man because the paradox of tragedy in real life is experienced mostly by individual men. Thus as we identify ourselves with the protagonist the sense of tragedy is aroused in us. The protagonist is therefore portrayed vividly as a believable human being. Traits may include strength of character as in Othello, intelligence and cleverness as in Hamlet, foolish vanity as in King Lear, and even treachery as in Macbeth. We are led to identify ourselves with the protagonist as in Hamlet's soliloquies we share the thoughts that only Hamlet knows. Similarly in Macbeth we find ourselves let in on the plot to murder Duncan and we hear the prophecies that motivate Macbeth. Such characterization of the central figures is well suited to expressing tragedy.

Each play contains an element of hope that is disappointed or ambition that is frustrated. Here is the acting out of the disappointment paradox. Macbeth is the most straightforward example. Macbeth murders Duncan with the assurance of good reward. He then enters battle with what again seems to be positive assurance. Only when it is too late does he realize that he is being led to his destruction.

Hamlet also has a central, well considered ambition, but its result is not so straightforward. Hamlet wants to avenge his father's murder, but the whole matter is so entangled with every thing from petty court rivalries to national politics that his success is accompanied by disaster.

And let me speak to the yet unknowing world

How these things came about. So shall you hear

Of carnal, bloody, and unnatural acts,

Of accidental judgements, casual slaughters,

Of deaths put on by cunning and forced cause,

And, in this upshot, purposes mistook

Fall'n on the inventors' heads.

Hamlet V ii

Finally, we should consider a very prominent part of all four tragedies: death to the protagonist. Death is important in expressing tragedy because it is at the very heart of the paradox of disappointment. For secular man and even for many religious men death brings final conclusive disillusionment to every meaningful hope. It is the embodiment of defeat. In the tragedies under consideration, death is not used as an extreme expression of human suffering. Rather it is used symbolically to emphasize the disappointment and defeat that accompany it. The symbolic character of death is especially notable in Othello's suicide. Iago's treachery caused several other deaths but not Othello's. Othello's suicide is a response to his despair. The tragedy in Hamlet is not specifically Hamlet's death, but the overall miscalculation and unnecessary bloodshed. Hamlet's own death merely confirms the disaster.

We have said that tragedy deals with one of the great paradoxes of life. It does not propose a solution to the paradox. It does not tell us that life is meaningful in spite of defeat and disappointment, nor does it point to despair and proclaim the worthlessness of our hopes. Rather it affirms the paradox and challenges us with it.

Shakespearean Tragedy

Shakespeare's Tragedies

William Shakespeare started writing tragedies because he thought the tragic plots used by other English writers were lacking artistic purpose and form. He used the fall of a notable person as the main focus in his tragedies. Suspense and climax were an added attraction for the audience. His work was extraordinary in that it was not of the norm for the time. A reader with even little knowledge of his work would recognize one of the tragedies as a work of Shakespeare.

A hero today is seen as a person who is idolized. Nowadays, a hero does not have to have wealth or certain political beliefs, but instead can be regarded as a hero for his/her actions and inner strength. However, in the plays of Shakespeare, the tragic hero is always a noble man who enjoys some status and prosperity in society but possesses some moral weakness or flaw which leads to his downfall. External circumstances such as fate also play a part in the hero's fall. Evil agents often act upon the hero and the forces of good, causing the hero to make wrong decisions. Innocent people always feel the fall in tragedies, as well.

The four most famous Shakespeare tragedies are King Lear, Hamlet, Othello, and Macbeth.

Hamlet is about an emotionally scarred young man trying to avenge the murder of his father, the king. The ghost of Hamlet's father appears to Hamlet, telling him that he was murdered by his brother, Claudius, who has now become the king. Claudius has also married Gertrude, the old king's widow and Hamlet's mother.

Hamlet is appalled by his mother's actions and by what the ghost tells him about Claudius's cold-blooded murder of his own brother. To buy time to plot his revenge, Hamlet takes on an "antic disposition," acting like a madman and alienating himself from the young woman he loves, Ophelia. Finally, his opportunity to publicly reveal Claudius's guilt comes when a troupe of actors come to Elsinore. Hamlet gets them to stage a play which parallels the murder of his father. The play itself reveals that Hamlet knows the truth about his father's death; the king's horrified reaction reveals his guilt.

Furious and alarmed, Claudius decides to send Hamlet to England with orders secretly demanding Hamlet's death. Hamlet confronts his mother about her role in his father's murder and her marriage to Claudius, which Hamlet sees as incestuous and a betrayal of his father. As tempers, emotions, and voices rise, Hamlet hears a noise from behind the arras (tapestry) in the room. Thinking Claudius is in hiding, Hamlet thrusts his sword through the tapestry, killing Polonius, an agent of the king and the father of Ophelia and her brother, Laertes.

The ship on which Hamlet travels to England is boarded by a band of pirates, who release him (but not before Hamlet substitutes his own death order with an order for the execution of his "friends" who were taking him to his death). Hamlet returns to Denmark just in time to see the funeral procession of Ophelia, who has drowned. It is suspected that Ophelia's death is a suicide. Hamlet is confronted by Laertes, who holds him responsible for the deaths of his father and his sister.

A "sporting" duel between Hamlet and Laertes is set up, but Laertes poisons the tip of his sword in order to kill Hamlet during the fight. Claudius, too, wants to take no chances, and he prepares a poisoned cup for Hamlet to drink from. During the fight, Gertrude accidentally drinks from the poisoned cup and collapses. The swords of Hamlet and Laertes are switched, and both Hamlet and Laertes are mortally wounded. Before he dies, however, Hamlet stabs Claudius and also forces him to swallow the poisoned drink.

Othello , a Moor serving as a general in the military of Venice, is victimized as a result of his love for Desdemona, the daughter of a Venetian statesman. The villain of the play is Iago, a career military man who plots revenge against Othello, Desdemona, and Michael Cassio because Othello has promoted Cassio to lieutenant, a position to which Iago feels he is entitled.

Othello's elopement with Desdemona sets in motion a long line of devious scams orchestrated by Iago. The action of the play moves to Cyprus, where an anticipated military battle is over before it begins. Iago manages to get Cassio drunk at a celebration where he had strict orders to refrain from drinking and to be on guard. When a fight breaks out (again set up by Iago) and the alarm bell is rung, Othello angrily strips Cassio of his title of lieutenant.

Cassio is devastated and humiliated by Othello's action, and Desdemona intervenes on his behalf to convince Othello that Cassio's punishment does not fit his crime. At the same time, Iago begins to imply to Othello that Desdemona is having an affair with Cassio. Iago continues to manipulate Othello, raising his suspicions until he is in a jealous rage. At the same time, Iago is also manipulating both Desdemona and Cassio.

At Iago's prodding, Othello demands that Desdemona produce a handkerchief which was Othello's first gift to her (and which he has caused to be dropped during his first fit of rage). Desdemona cannot comprehend Othello's fury and his public mistreatment of her. The handkerchief actually has fallen into Iago's hands, given to him unwittingly by his wife Emilia, Desdemona's lady in waiting. Iago has managed to plant it in Cassio's chamber as "evidence" of the affair between Cassio and Desdemona. Othello becomes convinced that Iago is right about Desdemona and Cassio and vows that Desdemona must die. Iago promises to take care of Cassio for him.

In the final act of the play, Othello awakens the sleeping Desdemona with a kiss and finally accuses her outright of infidelity. Although she denies any involvement with Cassio and swears her love for her husband, Othello refuses to believe her, suffocating her with a pillow. Emilia enters the bed chamber and insists to Othello that Desdemona was a faithful wife. Emilia soon realizes that the villain behind the false accusations is her own husband. When she defends Desdemona's honor and blames her husband to the officials who gather at the scene, Iago stabs her in the back and escapes. In anguish, Othello kills himself, asking that he be remembered as one who once did good service for Venice, and one who "loved not wisely, but too well." In an unusual twist for a Shakespearean tragedy, the true villain, Iago, does not die at the end, although he is to be taken away and tortured.

Macbeth is about a noble warrior who gets caught up in a struggle for power. Supernatural events and Macbeth's ruthless wife play a major role in his downfall.

The play begins by immediately linking Macbeth to the forces of evil and the supernatural in the form of three witches. Macbeth has demonstrated his bravery and loyalty by leading King Duncan's armies to victory over a the forces of a scheming traitor. Shortly afterwards, he and his friend Banquo are confronted by the witches, who tell him that he will be given the title of Thane of Cawdor and will become king. The witches' message to Banquo is not clear: he will be "lesser than Macbeth, but greater," and his sons will be kings. Macbeth takes the witches' statements as truth when he is given the title of Thane of Cawdor as a reward for his valor in battle.

Macbeth realizes that the only way he can become king is to kill Duncan, and he is torn between his ambition and his fear that one murder will lead to many others. Lady Macbeth,just as ambitious and more ruthless than her husband, finally goads him into committing the murder, devising a plan for Macbeth to kill the king as he sleeps and put the blame on Duncan's guards.

Macbeth goes through with the murder of Duncan, but the act marks the beginning of his descent into guilt, paranoia, psychological disturbance, and tyranny. He is taken over by a relentless ambition for power and continues to eliminate everyone that he regards as a threat. His worst acts are the hired assassination of his friend Banquo and the slaughter of the family of Macduff, a noble who has been openly opposed to him. Macbeth's first fear proves true: the murder of Duncan teaches "bloody instruction," and Macbeth finds himself getting deeper and deeper into his tyranny and its bloodbath. Macbeth publicly reveals his guilt when the ghost of Banquo appears to him (and to him only) at a celebration feast; Macbeth's bizarre behavior as he "confronts" the ghost makes it clear to everyone that he has been involved in the murders of Duncan and Banquo.

In desperation, Macbeth returns to the witches for more information about his future, but rather than telling him anything directly, they conjure several apparitions which seem to reassure him. He is told to beware Macduff, but he is also told that "no man born of woman" will harm him and that he will never be defeated until the trees of Great Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane castle. The witches' last apparition seems to reemphasize the first prophecy that Banquo's sons will be kings.

As the forces of good, led by Macduff and Malcolm, Duncan's son and the rightful heir to the throne, gather strength and prepare to attack Macbeth's castle, Macbeth's world begins to fall apart. Lady Macbeth goes insane, overwhelmed by guilt for the actions that she helped to start. The woman who once told her husband that "a little water will clear us of this deed" walks in her sleep, wringing her hands and trying to wash away the blood and guilt. She eventually takes her own life, and Macbeth begins to sense the futility of his evil actions, realizing that he has lost everything, including his soul, in his bloody pursuit of power.

When the approaching army camouflages itself in tree branches from Birnam Wood to invade the castle, Macbeth finally comes face to face with Macduff. Desperately clinging to his last hope, Macbeth tells Macduff that no man born of woman can kill him. However, Macduff reveals that he was "untimely ripped" from his mother's womb, and proceeds to attack. Macbeth faces his now-certain death with his original bravery, but the reign of terror is ended when Macduff brings in Macbeth's severed head at the end of the play. Malcolm takes his rightful place as king, and peace is restored in Scotland.

King Lear is a tragic story of an old man's descent into madness as his world crumbles around him. It is also a tale of Lear's pride and his blindness to the truth about his three daughters and others around him. A subplot of the play involves another family (that of the Earl of Gloucester) torn apart by a scheming child (Edmund plots against his half-brother, Edgar). Both fathers suffer a great deal for their inability to see the truth about their children.

As the play opens, Lear has ruled well and is regarded highly in his kingdom. However, he has reigned for a long time and wants someone to take over his duties as he moves toward his last years. He announces that he will divide his kingdom among his three daughters on the basis of how much they can gush about how much they love him.

The two eldest, Goneril and Regan, know exactly what they are to say in order to win over their father and a big share of his wealth and power. The youngest daughter, Cordelia, is the most sincere and true to her father. She knows what her sisters are doing and decides not to flatter her father with overwhelming complements, but instead to tell him that she "loves his majesty according to her duty, neither more or less." Angered by what he sees as ingratitude and Cordelia's refusal to play the game of flattery, Lear gives her none of his wealth and cuts her off entirely. Lear even banishes his faithful friend Kent, who tries to intervene on Cordelia's behalf. The King of France comes to Cordelia's rescue by offering to marry her.

According to the arrangement with his daughters, Lear will divide his time equally between them, living with each daughter and her husband for a month at a time. He also will bring along a retinue of one hundred knights. Lear lives first with Goneril and her husband, the Duke of Albany. However, Goneril soon tires of the burden and argues with Lear, sending him off to her sister, Regan. Regan, too, wants no part of caring for her father, and she and her husband, the Duke of Cornwall, leave home to stay at the castle of the Earl of Gloucester.

Eventually, Goneril and Albany , Lear and his Fool, and Kent (now in disguise but determined to help Lear) all arrive at Gloucester's castle,where the sisters and Lear engage in a bitter confrontation. Infuriated by Goneril and Regan's repeated attempts to strip him of his knights and his dignity, Lear realizes that Cordelia was the only daughter who actually loved him, and he runs out into a violent thunderstorm. Cornwall, Goneril, and Regan shut the doors of Gloucester's castle against the frail old man, leaving him to fend for himself against the elements of the storm. Cornwall and Goneril show the true extent of their awful cruelty when, in the next act, they pluck out Gloucester's eyes and leave him for dead because he has confessed (to Edmund, who has then immediately reported it to Cornwall) his sympathy towards Lear and Cordelia. Cornwall is mortally wounded in this scene, stabbed by a servant who tries to stop his cruel attack on Gloucester.

In the midst of the storm, Lear rails against the elements, but he begins to become aware of the suffering of mankind in general, as well as his own. He also loses his sanity, but he is lovingly cared for by Kent, the Fool, and Edgar (Gloucester's exiled son who, like Cordelia, has been tricked by his unscrupulous sibling and now is posing as a lunatic, "Poor Tom" as he waits for an opportunity to put things to rights). The four take refuge from the storm in a hovel on the heath. Later, the blinded Gloucester is reunited with Lear, as well.

Hearing that her father is in trouble, Cordelia comes from France with an army to fight against Goneril and Regan and their husbands. With the help of Kent, she is reunited with Lear, though in the battle between England and France, the forces of Albany and Cornwall are victorious, and Lear and Cordelia are taken prisoner. Edmund, who has allied himself with both Goneril and Regan and has led each to believe he will marry her, secretly orders that Cordelia and Lear be killed in their prison cells.

Albany reveals his true nobility when he turns against his scheming wife, Goneril, and accuses her of treason, along with Regan and Edmund. Edmund refutes the charge, and his guilt is to be determined by duel, with an unknown warrior representing Albany and his charge. The "agent" is Edgar, who has come into possession of a letter from Goneril to Edmund and has given it to Albany; in the letter, Goneril outlines their plot to overthrow Albany once the battle with Cordelia is over. The trumpet is sounded, and Edgar appears to fight Edmund. His true identity is not revealed until he has won the fight and Edmund lies dying.

Edgar then tells Albany his account of the period of exile with Lear and of his own reunion with Gloucester. Edmund appears to be moved by Edgar's story of compassion and suffering, and when Kent arrives on the scene, Edmund suddenly remembers his order for the deaths of Lear and Cordelia. At almost the same moment, Albany is informed that Goneril has taken her own life and has also poisoned her sister as a result of their bitter rivalry for Edmund's affections.

Tragically, Edmund's "recollection" is too late--Lear enters carrying Cordelia's body. He is a pitiful picture--a frail old man who has suffered terrible losses, in part because of his own pride and blindness, and in part because of the evil of Cornwall, Edmund, and his two daughters. Lear himself dies in the final moments of the play, heartbroken and beaten by the bitter and cruel storms he has endured.

Although the main characters of these tragedies possess different traits, they all can be described as tragic Shakespearean heroes: they are basically good and noble men whose tragic flaw leads to their destruction.