 |
 |
|
If Shakespeare's tragedies give us the measure of what it means to sink beneath the burden of history, crushed by "The weight of this sad time" (King Lear, V.iii.324), his comedies and romances create opportunities to explore the way the world might look and feel with the dead weight of prevalence and probability lifted from its shoulders..in his Elizabethan comedies and the last plays of his Jacobean period, Shakespeare's gaze is levelled at the remote horizon of what could be, rather than absorbed in the immediate tyranny of what is. (Ryan, K. 1989)
Influences
Key influences in the development of dramatic art of the Renaissance period:
Three fundamental idea of the Renaissance period:
(Reference: Crawford, J. 1984. Acting in Person and in Style. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers)
Essentially, Shakespeare transformed the traditions of comedy. The comedy traditions of Lyly and Peele with their roots in medieval literature and folklore were his major literary catalysts. Lyly was an Oxford academic wrote for the Earl of Oxford's schoolboys and whose work was characterised by distanced emotion that was 'cool rather than described.' (Wells, 1986) Like Peele, Lyly's work avoided strong demonstrative feeling but rather was expert at weaving patterns of subtle possibilities of love, usually in courtly terms. Lyly aimed at 'soft smiling, not loud laughing' even with his lowest of characters.
Other academics of great influence to Shakespeare's brand of comedies include Thomas Nashe, Robert Greene, Thomas Lodge and Christopher Marlowe. Their work gave drama 'a multifaceted artefact, full of shifting modes and plots, references and illusions and spectacle and a language for the stage that was a shower of gold indeed.' (Daniell in Wells, p.102-103) Shakespeare's comedies are very much about casting a net over the whole of humanity and reproducing our foibles and quests on stage and as Samuel Johnson wrote, his sense of comedy seems instinctive.
Shakespearean comedy is a more venturesome and a more imaginative undertaking. It does not assume that the conditions and the requisites of man's (sic) welfare have been certainly established, and are therefore sanctity only to be safeguarded. It speculates imaginatively on modes, not of preserving a good already reached, but of enlarging and extending the possibilities of this and other kinds of goods. Its heroes are voyages in pursuit of happiness not yet attained, a brave new world wherein man's life may be fuller, his sensations more exquisite and his joys more widespread, more lasting and so more humane. (Charlton, in Ryan, K. pgs. 78-79)
Another notable influence on Shakespeare's comedies include the Commedia Dell'Arte and Italian exuberance is well displayed in many of his plays - Italy gave his drama a great many exotic landscapes and peoples and he set many of his comedies in places like, Verona, Padua, Venice, Messina, Florence, Rome and Sicily. As Wells's points out, sixteenth century Italian comedy was rich in social and sexual intrigue and is firmly city based. Young men fall in love with their eyes firmly on inherited wealth.
'Hath Leonato any son, my Lord?' asks Claudio in wooing quests for Hero, his daughter. Much Ado about Nothing. There is also often an emphasis on business possessions and skills and merchant trading such as in The Merchant of Venice. Even in Shakespeare's more serious plays, comedy is still apparent, even if only for a minute. Macbeth and King Lear both have their fools, and Richard III is often played for laughter.
The comedies provide us with a means of grasping the future concretely in the guise of the present, of experiencing the possible as if it were already actual.. The use of dancing and singing in Shakespeare's comedies in particular, signal two important insights. Firstly, his astounding understanding of the humanity and a deepening understanding of love and how this can lead to, and matures in, marriage. (Daniell inWells, p.104)
Sexual identity, or more precisely, the confusion of sexual identity, is also a notable consideration in some of Shakespeare's comedies. Women dressed as men and men as women provides a strange transvestism that works to 'dislocate the sexual stereotypes enslaving people and place and place them clearly within quotes of cultural constructions.' (in Ryan, K. p.88)
Some musing on notable Plays
There are too many comedies to discuss comprehensively here but here are a few musings on some of the plays you may be most familiar with.
Three well known comedies were considered to be the bard's first. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, The Comedy of Errors, were all written somewhere around 1590. They are considered to be some of the 'poorer' of Shakespeare's comedies. Some notable themes and elements in these plays (and arguably in many of the comedies) include: Clashes of love and friendship Journeys Letters and Disguises Angry Aristocratic Fathers Internal Contradictions Low and High Life Characters Conflict in Marriage Cunning Double Plots
In the Comedy of Errors there are great passions and bewilderments and the play, as Wells suggest, maintains a classical unity of place in a harbour town sketched in and of time, like the other famous sea play The Tempest. In both these plays, the events are the climax of a long history.
Love's Labour's Lost is a play that deals with time and death, is lyrical in style and verbally rich. It is argued that it belongs to the same time frame as three other highly lyrical plays A Midsummer's Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Richard 11. This play is interesting because it brings with mismatches but no real action and flows through nine scenic units. It incorporates some commedia type characters and is considered one of the most masterly comedies. In A Midsummer's Night's Dream we see another lyric comedy with nine scenic units and one last act that boasts a play within a play. This play challenges our imagination in every possible way. As Wells notes, it creates constellations and kaleidoscopic patterns.
In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare interweaves two stories from folklore and indeterminacy is important. Portia carries the symbolic medieval values of the Four Daughters of God - Mercy, Justice, Peace and Truth but does not always employ them. Certainly it suggests a distinctive anti-Semitic tone from Shakespeare. Research suggests that influence came from Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta .
The Tempest is a meshing of romance, stage devices, voyager's narrative, non-Platonic theories, hermetic magic, all on a haunted island where the sea is always near. The idea of shipwrecked seamen was the theme of several commedia dell'arte plays this was a likely influence. The play was written towards the end of Shakespeare's career.
Much Ado About Nothing was a popular comedy from the beginning and a contemporary of Shakespeare Leonard Digges wrote, 'let but Beatrice and Benedick be seen, lo, in a trice the Cockpit, Galleries, Boxes, all are full.' (in Riley & McAllister 2001, p.61) The wonderful verbal sparring of Beatrice and Benedick was possibly inspired by the debates between a fictional man and woman by Italian Renaissance writer, Baldassare Castiglione in his 1528 The Book of the Courtier. Hero and Claudio possible based on the 1532 Italian poem, Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto which was later translated to English. This is a play where gossip and eavesdropping are central elements.
The comedies of Shakespeare are too numerous to mention but following is the complete list. I would urge you to have a look at the complete works in your own time:
All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors Cymbeline Love's Labours Lost Measure for Measure The Merry Wives of Windsor The Merchant of Venice A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles, Prince of Tyre The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Troilus and Cressida Twelfth Night Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter's Tale
References: Crawford, J. 1984. Acting in Person and in Style. Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown Publishers) Ryan, K. 1989. Shakespeare. Atlantic Highlands NJ: Humanities Press Wells, S. (ed). 1986. Shakespeare Studies. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
|