Some Notes on the Comedies of William Shakespeare

1
Some Notes on the Comedies of William Shakespeare
Eng 255 Shakespeare on Film Terra Community
College
2
Introduction to Comic Theory
Comedy meant something very different to the
Elizabethan culture of Shakespeares time than it
does to the Twentieth Century. Humor was not a
requirement (note The Merchant of Venice where it
is hard to find anything funny about it). A
comedy was a play which started out in chaos and
ended with everyone in the script alive and
living happily ever after. There are four
sub-groups in Shakespearean Comedy. 1. The
Confusion Comedies are early and primitive.
Comedy of Errors, Two Gentlemen of Verona,
Merchant of Venice, and Taming of the Shrew all
thrive on disguises2. The Festive Comedies are
later and more sophisticated plays. They are
wrapped around celebrations of life such as
folk-festivals and weddings Loves Labors Lost,
Twelfth Night, Midsummers Nights Dream, Much Ado
About Nothing, As You Like It, and even The Merry
Wives of Windsor. 3. The Black Comedies are more
morbid and were written at the same time most of
Shakespeares best tragedies were and were
probably affected by the death of his young son.
There are two plays typically listed here Alls
Well that Ends Well and Measure for
Measure. 4. The Late Romances need to be
mentioned however some scholars do not classify
them as a sub-set of comedy but as their own
category. They are products of Shakespeares
late career and follow quite different dramatic
conventions. Included would be four plays
Pericles, Coriolanus, Winters Tale and The
Tempest.
3
Societal Conventions

• Shakespeare was a professional entertainer who
  had to exist in his own societal milieu. Remember
  that while the vast majority of his audience were
  lower class, it was the upper aristocracy who had
  financially invested in his company. He uses two
  approaches to comic action both reflect his
  environment. Aristocratic, noble or royal
  characters who are in comedies are portrayed very
  differently than the base, common, or popular
  folk.
• Aristocratic comedy tended to be sedate, witty
  word-play oriented, clever, and sophisticated.
  Upper class characters were always present.
  Dukes were very common however Kings were very
  rare. Manners and social mores are very
  correct. This characterization tended to
  preserve the self-image of these upper class
  groups -- a very important consideration to
  Shakespeare and his business partners since they
  were sponsored by such nobles.
• Popular comedy tended to be slapstick almost
  three-stooges style of farce. Lots of
  violence, lots of raw sexual double-play
  language, lots of tomfoolery, lots of noise, lots
  of drunkenness, and lots of wrong uses of
  language.
• Both Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing
  contain both levels of comic action and move back
  and forth. The comedy level between the Duke,
  Lady Olivia and Viola/Cesario is very different
  than the comedy of Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew
  Aguecheek, Malvolio, and Maria. And the raw
  tomfoolery of Constable Dogberry and his deputies
  is in stark contrast to the witty word-play
  between Benedick and Beatrice.

4
Comic Conventions 1

• Comic conventions were comic features that
  Shakespeare consistently used. There is some
  distinct difference between the early comedies
  and the late ones.
• Early comedies had lots of simple and
  uncomplicated characters playing shallow and
  caricature roles. They also have stereotypical
  names. In Midsummers Nights Dream, for
  instance, we have lower class characters called
  Snug, Bottom, and Flute. In Loves Labours
  Lost, the clowns name is Dull. In Twelfth Night,
  the clown is Feste and the drunk is Sir Toby
  Belch. Dont forget Constable Dogberry in Much
  Ado about Nothing.
• Early comedies had lots of naive and cliche
  driven dialogue filled with malapropisms. A
  marvelous example is Constable Dogberrys
  terrible use of vocabulary in Much Ado.
• Comedies often used mistaken identity based upon
  identical twins. For some reason, twins
  fascinated the Renaissance culture. Excellent
  examples of mistaken identity based upon
  identical twins are Comedy of Errors or Twelfth
  Night.
• Comedies often used mistaken identity based upon
  gender switches. Five plays here include Two
  Gentlemen of Verona, As You Like It, Merry Wives
  of Windsor, Twelfth Night, and Merchant of
  Venice. When one remembers that young men played
  the parts of women in the Shakespearean theatre,
  you clearly have men playing the roles of women
  disguising themselves as men!
• Later comedies tended to move away from slapstick
  as a primary comic convention. If you compare
  the earlier comedies with the later ones, you
  will note that Shakespeare starts to pay more
  attention to upper class characters. The Black
  Comedies for instance, have very little
  tomfoolery in their action/ plot.

5
2

• This was a cruel and harsh society. It did not
  have the same sensitivity to minorities as we do
  in our politically correct generation.
• If you were
• A racial minority (the term Ethiop is a term of
  insult and derision in Much Ado About Nothing and
  in Midsummers Nights Dream),
• A national-origin minority (spoke a foreign
  language such as in Merry Wives of Windsor or
  Merchant of Venice),
• Uncultured and uneducated (white-trash/
  rude-mechanicals such as in Merchant of Venice
  or Midsummers Nights Dream),
• A religious minority (Jewish in The Merchant of
  Venice, Puritan in Twelfth Night, or Roman
  Catholic in Taming of the Shrew or Measure for
  Measure),
• Had physical, mental or medical handicaps (the
  father of Laurence Bobbo in The Merchant of
  Venice),
• An alcoholic (Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night)
• A convict (background scenes in Taming of the
  Shrew),
• or even a Social Misfit (Sir Andrew Aguecheek in
  Twelfth Night or Don Juan in Much Ado about
  Nothing)
• you were the brunt of a great deal of often
  violent humor.
• Even upper class witty humor was at the expense
  of minorities In Act I scene 2 of The Merchant
  of Venice, check the dialogue between Portia and
  Nerissa as they are are waiting for the Prince of
  Morocco! They insult the French, the Germans,
  the English, the Scotch, and even other Italians
  by using Elizabethan cultural caricatures.

6
3
Gender issues were socially very relevant and
important! Many of the comedies have themes
wrapped around courtship and marriage. Often
these portrayed the conflicts between a proposed
love marriage and a proposed arranged marriage.
You will see this pattern in such diverse
comedies as Alls Well that Ends Well, Taming of
the Shrew, Midsummers Nights Dream, Merchant of
Venice and even in Much Ado About Nothing. Often,
the most mature, sensible, and integrated
personalities in the comedies are the women. The
men are often the biggest fools. Women control
critical actions in the plots of such plays as
Merchant of Venice, Midsummer Nights Dream,
Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, Loves
Labors Lost, Merry Wives of Windsor, As You Like
It, among others. While Elizabeth I was on the
throne, these two issues above were quite serious
social concerns of the time. First off, remember
that this was a strange innovation, not just to
have a woman monarch (her half-dsister Mary
precededbut to have a woman monarch who did
literally refused to marry. Elizabeth, became,
then, the model for all these innovative social
conventions. Women could lead, were balanced and
mature, did not have to get married to find their
proper place in society! As soon as she died,
and James came to the throne, social values
changed back. You rarely find balanced and
mature women in any of the plays that Shakespeare
wrote later in his life.
7
4

• There are evil characters in comedies. Malvolio
  in Twelfth Night, Don Juan in Much Ado About
  Nothing, and Shylock in Merchant of Venice. In
  these examples, however, evil is booted out at
  the end. We dont want your type... in this
  kind of happy play.
• While modern audiences have problems with
  Shakespeares old language. If we can get past
  it, we find that it is obscenely funny. Sexual
  double entendres were common. This is
  particularly true about costumes. The humorous
  reference to a cod-piece in As You Like It
  probably doesnt make any sense unless you recall
  that scene in Taming of the Shrew where Petruchio
  cautions one of this servants about sheathing
  his dagger. There is the song Hold thy Peace
  in Twelfth Night and all kinds of reference to
  horns on cuckolds in Much Ado About Nothing.
  Scholars note that Elizabeth, the Queen, was
  known to have a sexually coarse sense of humor
  and since she often was in Shakespeares
  audience, he played to her enthusiasm.
• Music is an important part of comedy. More than
  in history or tragedy, songs and music were an
  important component of almost every comedy
  portrayed in this era. We will see music in
  several comedies.
• In the very earliest comedies, Shakespeare often
  wrote his lines in rhyme. Rhymed couplets are
  seen in the early comedies such as Comedy of
  Errors and The Taming of the Shrew. Eventually,
  Shakespeare changed this and wrote his plays in
  blank-verse -- poetic lines without rhyme but
  with a deliberate iambic-pentameter beat.

8
Differences betweenComedies and other plays

• In comedy and histories, the characters are
  social beings in tragedies, the characters are
  isolated and we explore psyches. The only example
  of a dramatic monologue in a comedy would be
  Benedicks commentaries about women. Perhaps the
  best example in a history play would be King
  Henrys prayer scene before the Battle of
  Agincourt.
• In comedies and histories, any conflict is
  between individuals or groups in tragedies, the
  conflict is internal. The only exception might
  also be the internal conflict demonstrated by
  King Henry in his walk-about mentioned above.
• In comedies and histories, characters are never
  changed during the plot in tragedies, the
  individual character dramatically changes during
  the plot. Both Macbeth and Hamlet are very
  different characters at the end of the play that
  what they are in the beginning.
• There are comic-relief characters in
  non-comedies! A characteristic of
  Shakespearean tragedies and histories is that
  there are comic-relief characters in nearly all
  of them. The drunken porter in Macbeth the
  gravedigger in Hamlet Falstaff in the Henry IV
  series and clowns, fools, and other humorous
  characters in most of them.
• Women were treated quite differently in all of
  Shakespeares plays. In his history plays, they
  have only minor roles. In comedies the women are
  wholesome. In the tragedies, they are monsters
  (Lady Macbeth, Goneril and Regan), innocent
  victims of slaughter (Cordelia, Lady Macduff, and
  Desdemona), Machiavels (Cleopatra), or
  psychological cases (Ophelia). More on this in
  the slides on tragedies.