Shakespeare Comedy Analysis

SHAKESPEARE’S COMEDIES AND TRAGEDIES
William Shakespeare lived and worked during an extraordinary quarter-century in the history of English drama which saw the development of new kinds of tragedies and comedies. He wrote the best of plays and also introducing a different classification of plays including the tragi-comedies, a differently new genre. Everyone loves his plays as much as they did in the 16 century. In this research you will read about Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies and several characteristics about them.
SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES
Tragedy is a genre from classical Greece. Although Shakespeare and his contemporaries knew very little about Greek tragedy they were familiar with Aristotle’s theories of tragedy and Roman tragic

And this is what makes Shakespearean tragedy so unique.

SHAKEAPEARE’S COMEDIES
Although many of Shakespeare’s plays could be very tragic and depressing his comedies are light hearted and funny. His comedies have stood the test of time and till today continue to enthral and entertain audiences worldwide despite our idea of humour being different from the idea of humour in Shakespeare’s time. He wrote about 16 comedies and his major comedies were written in the 1590s, that time in English history when the professional public theatres were just flourishing.
The main theme of Shakespeare’s comedies was love. It was usually about the separation and re-unification of lovers and disputes among various characters for example families like that of Rosalind and Orlando, Benedick and Beatrice. As mentioned earlier Shakespeare’s comedies differed from his tragedies and histories when it came to plots. ‘Mistaken Identity’ is one of the plot elements that is commonly found in his plays. This could be either because of mixed-up twins or clever disguises as seen in ‘As You Like It’ where Rosalind disguises herself as a man and Celia as a shepherdess to hide in the Forest of

Shakespeare created such characters and situations in his comedies that are funny and also loved and appreciated by the public but at the same time were critics of society. For example Feste, Touchstone and King Lear’s fool. In his plays the fools help realise who are the actual fools in reality. And not all of the fools are fools, like Speed in ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’ is very quick and witty. Because according to Shakespeare answering something completely different to what question is asked is a great source of laughter. In some of Shakespeare’s later comedies his fools seem to become more witty and sarcastic like Lance and Bottom. Apparently the ‘full of life’ characters who make his lays even more amusing and hilarious are Falstaff, Touchstone and the other jesters, fools and larger than life characters.
Another major aspect of Shakespeare’s comedies is ‘complex plots’. And with that several intertwining plot lines like stories of different people in a funny way to keep the audiences guessing and surprised. Eventually the plot is straightened out. For example when Rosalind meets Orlando her lover in the Forest she has to keep up to her