The Characteristics Of Shakespeare’s Comedies Essay, Research Paper

The Characteristics of Shakespeare’s Comedies

Shakespeare wrote many different forms of literary works and one of them is

comedy. At the end of his professional life he had written four famous comedies

which were later called his “romances”. Shakespeare’s comedies were not

primarily love stories but they all included a love plot. His romances all had

the happy ending of a comedy, but in a way they hinted on violence (Prentice

Hall Literature). His focus and emphasis was clearly towards the structure and

language of his comedies, which made his comedies quite distinct from others.

The ideas and concepts also made his comedies designated, as we experienced it

in one of his most famous comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The structure of Shakespeare comedies is common in all his comic drama.

The play goes through three phases. In the first stage there is order and

discipline. Then it goes through a situation where there is chaos and disorder.

Finally in the third stage order is restored again and the play ends in a

festive ending. In the beginning of A Midsummer Nights Dream we see that Theseus

has entire control over the people in Athens and he is getting ready to wed

Hyppolita, queen of the amazons. Then quickly the whole situation changes when

Lysander and Hermia flee into the forest and complications start to build up.

The play ends with a joyful ending, when daylight has returned, the duke and

duchess and the four lovers are united in the bonds of marriage and they are

entertaining themselves with dance and music. Their world of love has come to

its proper order.

The language was evidently the main reason why Shakespeare’s comedies were

more amusing than other comedies of his time. He used many techniques to

illustrate humor, and sometimes we have to know the inner meanings to find it

comical. The play of words or puns were very popular in the comedies of

Shakespeare. Quince makes a good pun when he mentions the French crown. It is a

pun because it could have more than one meaning, it could mean gold coins or

also baldness which is often caused by treatments of STD. Another good example

of a pun is what Lysander says to Hermia “For lying so, Hermia, I do not lie”.

This example shows how good Shakespeare was at playing around with words as he

uses the word lie in two different ways. Lie could mean both lying down or not

telling the truth. Some of these puns show a lot of facetiousness and wit.

Lysander says to Demetrius “You have her father’s love. Do you marry him”

implying that Demetrius might be attractive to males. The obscene jokes also

play a great part in making the play comical. What is particularly absorbing is

that most of these unclean jokes are unintended. The actors mean something else,

but we get the wrong message. When the actors say “I kiss the walls hole” or

“Cursed be thy stones” they literally mean it, while our mind searches for

hidden meanings. Oxymoron and ironies give an additional meaning for the reader.

Titania who has fallen in love with an ass says “Thou art as wise, as thou art

beautiful” when we know that an ass is neither beautiful nor intelligent.

Another thing that makes the comedy humorous is the way Shakespeare shows

stupidity among the characters. He uses different ways, like malapropism,

exaggerated alliteration, mispronunciation and also bad punctuation. In the play

we could easily distinguish the people who were not well educated through the

mistakes they made when talking and acting. The craftsmen very often used wrong

but similar words unintentionally which changed the meaning of what they were

trying to say. They might use a big word and try to sound clever, when they

actually sounded stupid. Using alliteration in a speech normally sounds

penetrating and intelligent but when it is exaggerated like, “Whereat, with

blade, with bloody blameful blade, he bravely broached his boiling bloody

breast”, it sounds awkward and pointless. Mispronunciations like perfet instead

of perfect and bad punctuation like “We do not come, as minding to content you,

our true intent is.” makes the characters sound silly and the play rather funny.

At the end w hen the workers were acting the Play Piramus and Thisbe we see how

low their knowledge of acting was. Theseus says to the fellow members of the

audience that since the wall is a person, it should curse back at Pyramus. He

meant it as a joke, but Bottom without knowing where the proper parameters of

the stage are, steps out of character and addresses Theseus directly, explaining

that the wall shouldn’t speak, because the line is actually Thisby’s cue to come

on stage.

Some of the ideas and concepts that we have encountered in the past are

also found in Shakespeare comedies. The idea of love triangle is very important

in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The love triangle formed conflicts and

complications which developed into the main plot. Many characters became

involved into the love triangle, and with the help of Puck the situation became

more intense and sometimes very amusing. Another concept that we see in the play

is the reversal of role between male and female: Helena chasing Demetrius, when

it is usually the male chasing the female. Helena’s role transforms from a

passive feminine one to an active, assertive masculine one. Flute who is a male

had to dress up and act like a female when he was Thisbe in the play. Also

Pyramus was described of having cherry lips and white cheeks, which is actually

an ideal description of a female. The idea of waking and dreaming was also very

comical, since they were actually experiencing it all. All the Athenians, plus

Bottom and T itania fell asleep sometimes during the play and they all woke up

to have themselves or their situation changed. After waking from their final

sleep, the lovers were amazed to see each other there and felt that their

experiences were just dreams. All the fairy adventures that took place during

the moonlit night seemed just dreamlike hallucinations. The ancient idea of

metamorphosis is also expressed in Shakespeare’s comedy. People are changing

their understanding their feelings and their images throughout the play. With

the love juice of cupid both Demetrius and Lysander learned to change the

receiver of their affection. We see in the play that love can turn people around,

and sometimes make asses of them. Bottom transforming into an ass was a good

example of metamorphosis.

The structure, the language, the ideas and concepts are all important parts

of a Shakespeare comedy and with these apparent characteristics it is quite easy

to distinguish a Shakespeare play from another.