Balti state university a. Russo chair of english philology

W. Shakespeare’s Comedies 
Shakespeare‟s plays are based on sharp conflicts but they possess an optimistic spirit. The 
victory of humanist ideals is inevitable but it is attained in a severe struggle against all obstacles. 
The heroes fight against destiny itself and build their own fate according to their own free will. As 
men of Renaissance, they for the first time trust themselves and their efforts are crowned with 
success. 
Most of the comedies were written by W. Shakespeare during the first period of his creation. 
Among them are: The Comedy of Errors, Much Ado About Nothing, The Taming of the Shrew, As 
You Like It, in which Shakespeare touched upon such themes as: family relations, happiness in 
marriage, relations between parents and children, foolishness of man, freedom of thought, etc. 
There is a great deal of entertainment and comical humour and a variety in those characters which 
Shakespeare thought to fit people of his time. The characters of these plays are often forming two 
antagonistic groups – on the one hand there are people of the new generation who change under the 
circumstances of life and tend to change, on the other hand among them there are stupid creatures 
who prefer to go on living in obscurity and ignorance. 
The Taming of the Shrew (1593) 
In The Taming of the Shrew (1593) Shakespeare‟s critical tendencies are distinctly revealed. 
The plot is borrowed from a play printed at that time under the same title, which was permeated 
with the ideas of feudal times. A brute of a husband tames his wife and makes a slave out of her. 
According to the old play, women are inferior to men, their duty is to obey and fear their husbands. 

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Having taken the old plot, Shakespeare gave a new interpretation to the principal characters 
and created a comedy humane and progressive in its essence. The main characters are: Petruccio 
and Katherine. Petruccio, an adventurous young man, arrives at Padua on his way to Verona. He 
gets acquainted with Baptista, a rich citizen, and his two daughters, Katherine and Bianca. Bianca is 
a modest and obedient girl, while her sister is extremely stubborn and hard to deal with. Still it is 
the shrew who attracts Petruccio‟s attention. He wins her father‟s consent and gets his agreement to 
take her as a wife. 
Petruccio is a lover of fun, good jokes and adventures. He never suppresses Katherine, never 
makes her change directly, but inspiring her that she is a personality who deserves to be treated 
humanly. Katherine feels this attitude and notices that Petruccio is a noble-minded man different 
from the greedy and stupid males who surround her. Petruccio does not really tame Katerine but 
simply penetrates into her heart and knows how to lead her in the necessary direction. 
The characters of Petruccio and Katherine are contrasted to the world of selfish and ignorant 
people. If Katherine behaves like a shrew, she does it only in protest against her father who is 
concerned with the idea of how to secure rich husbands for his daughters. She struggles with all her 
might with her sister‟s vain and foolish admirers. Petruccio wins her heart not because he humiliates 
her, but because she comes to understand how greatly he differs form the petty men and women she 
knows. Katherina becomes the most loving and obedient among the wives. This puzzles the women 
and the men of their time and they take this change of her character as a miracle, never 
understanding that love, reasoning and understanding changed Katherine. 
Their union becomes a symbol of an alliance of two young people of the new formation who 
have joined their forces to fight against the world, full of vanity and mediocrity. Their moral 
superiority makes the reader believe that they will win.
The method of realistic art first applied by W. Shakespeare to his early comedies finds further 
development in his historic plays and tragedies. The first among Shakespeare‟s tragedies springs
Romeo and Juliet.
The First of W. Shakespeare‟s Tragedies