The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedies (Cambridge Introductions to Literature)

Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why do they still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventions of comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuse and move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about love, sex, gender, power, family, community, and class? What place have pain, cruelty, and even death in a comedy? Why all those puns? In a survey that travels from Shakespeare's earliest experiments in farce and courtly love-stories to the great romantic comedies of his middle years and the mould-breaking experiments of his last decade's work, this book addresses these vital questions. Organised thematically, and covering all Shakespeare's comedies from the beginning to the end of his career, it provides readers with a map of the playwright's comic styles, showing how he built on comedic conventions as he further enriched the possibilities of the genre. Cover 1 Half-title 3 Series-title 5 Title 7 Copyright 8 Contents 9 Preface 11 Chapter 1 Introduction: comedy as idea and practice 13 Laughter 13 Comic models 16 Shakespeare and comedy 18 Clowns 20 Actors 21 Audiences and spaces 22 Modern theories of comedy 24 Two hours’ traffic 26 Chapter 2 Farce 28 The Comedy of Errors 30 The Taming of the Shrew 35 Commedia and comedy 35 The frame 40 The Merry Wives of Windsor 42 Kaiser Falstaff 43 Chapter 3 Courtly lovers and the real world 47 Courtly love 47 Two Gentlemen of Verona 50 The clowns 50 The witty heroine 53 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 55 Working men: comic commentators 58 The Merchant of Venice 61 Shylock 65 Chapter 4 Comedy and language 70 The ‘great feast of languages’ 70 Rules of rhetoric 72 The clowns 73 Courtly language and gender 75 Endings 80 Chapter 5 Romantic comedy 83 Much Ado About Nothing 85 The conventional couple 86 The ‘merry war’ of Beatrice and Benedick 89 Three clowns 93 As You Like It 95 Pastoral ideal vs. political violence 96 Rosalind’s cross-dressing: release into language 100 Clowns 104 A musical interlude: songs in the plays 105 Twelfth Night 106 The eloquent heroine 107 Puritans, revellers, and clowns 111 Chapter 6 Problematic plots and endings: clowning and comedy post- Hamlet 115 Measure for Measure 117 All’s Well That Ends Well 121 The late romances 129 The Winter’s Tale 130 Cymbeline 133 The Tempest: postscript 135 Chapter 7 The afterlives of Shakespeare’s comedies 136 Comic fictions and historical reality 137 Performance history, social history 139 Romantic comedy and its heroines 141 Filming the comedies 144 Musical comedies 147 Conclusion 150 Improbable fictions 150 Further reading 153 Notes 155 1 Introduction: comedy as idea and practice 155 2 Farce 156 3 Courtly lovers and the real world 158 4 Comedy and language 158 5 Romantic comedy 159 6 Problematic plots and endings: clowning and comedy post-Hamlet 160 7 The afterlives of Shakespeare’s comedies 161 Conclusion 162 Index 163 Introduction : comedy as idea and practice Farce : The comedy of errors, The taming of the shrew, The merry wives of Windsor Courtly lovers and the real world : Two gentlemen of Verona, A midsummer night's dream, The merchant of Venice Comedy and language : Love's labour's lost Romantic comedy : Much ado about nothing, As you like it, Twelfth night Problematic plots and endings : clowning and comedy post-Hamlet : Measure for measure, All's well that ends well, The winter's tale, Cymbeline, The tempest The afterlives of Shakespeare's comedies.

A comprehensive survey of Shakespeare's comedies examining why and how they are still relevant today.