The plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into

Shakespeare’s comedies

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The plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into:

• Comedies
• Histories
• Tragedies

• Shakespeare’s 17 comedies are the most difficult to classify because they overlap in style with other genres. Critics often describe some plays as tragi-comedies because they mix equal measures of tragedy and comedy (see Much Ado about Nothing).

• All's Well That Ends Well
• As You Like It
• The Comedy of Errors (is believed to be Shakespeare’s earliest comedy, written around 1592)
• Cymbeline
• Love's Labour's Lost
• Measure for Measure
• The Merchant of Venice
• The Merry Wives of Windsor
• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pericles Prince of Tyre
• Taming of the Shrew
• The Tempest
• Twelfth Night
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona
• The Winter's Tale

Legacy

• Because of his humanist education, Shakespeare was familiar with classical (Greek and Latin) comedy
• The Latin comedies of Terence and another Roman poet, Plautus (ca. 258?-184 B.C.), were studied in Elizabethan schools

Structure

• From Terence and Plautus, Shakespeare learned how to
• organize a plot in a way modern editors may represent as a
• five-act structure:
• 1- A situation with tensions or implicit conflict (Exposition)
• 2- Implicit conflict is developed (Rising Action)
• 3- Conflict reaches height; frequently an impasse (Turning Point)
• 4- Things begin to clear up (Falling Action)
• 5- Problem is resolved, knots untied (Conclusion)

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• .

Structure

• conflict
• obstacles obstacles
• solution of conflict

Characters

• From the works of Plautus and Terence, Shakespeare learned to use certain stock characters such as
• - the prodigal youth and his female love interest; - "blocking figures" who provide the obstacle to be overcome (ex.the senex), a parent or guardian of the hero or heroine
• - the shrewish wife, the pedant, the braggart soldier (the miles gloriosus), the parasite, clowns, outlaws, clever servants, female confidantes.

Comedy:

• Is often set in an imaginary country (ex.Illyria)
• Is similar to a fairy-tale
• Characters are true to life

• In Shakespeare’s comedies female heroines are usually more important than male heroes
• But in Shakespearian
• time men played all the
• roles even female ones
• In characters we can
• see many mistakes
• and faults

The two most important motives in comedy:

• Right of an individual to free choice of love
• Contrast between the appearance and reality

• Shakespeare’s comedies are accompanied by music and sometimes actors play music instruments by themselves
• Songs are often sung by a jester or a fool; parallel the events of the plot.

The main themes in Shakespeare’s comedies are:

• Romantic love
• Friendship

Main features

• A struggle of old haters to overcome difficulty, often presented by young people
• Separation and re-unification
• Mistaken identities
• A clever servant
• Heightened tensions, often within a couple
• Complex, intertwining plot
• Use of puns

Twelfth Night

• Twelfth Night is a wonderful romantic comedy which was named after the Twelfth Night Christmas holiday.
• First performed between 1599 and 1601
• It contains basic themes like: divided twins, mistaken identity, true love conquering, gender-crossing and love madness.

• Orsino is a strong nobleman who lives in the country of Illyria. He is madly in love with the gorgeous lady Olivia.

• Viola is a young upper-class woman and the main character of the play. She represents herself as a man ‘Cesario’ and goes to work for Orsino
• and falls in love with him.
• Olivia is a good looking,
• wealthy and noble
• woman who lived in
• Illyria . Orsino was in
• love with her.

The Taming of the Shrew

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY5GVqLKm5Q

HAPPY END

• Thank you for your attention!