SHAKESPEARE'S COMEDIES PLAYS

 In Shakespearean comedy, forces of chaos seem to contribute to a larger harmony; the promiscuity of unregulated sexual desire leads to a prospect of constancy and marriage.  This is the reason why Shakespeare’s Comedy Plays always include marriage in the end.  Shakespeare was very familiar with classical Greek comedy.  The Grecian “Old Comedy” was generally satirical and frequently political in nature, containing within it an abundance of sexual innuendos.  He also includes the comedy styles of Commedia dell’arte.  He uses the stock characters akin to Commedia dell’arte such as the foolish old man, the devious bravado, or military officers full of false bravado.  Shakespeare took the best comedic traits of various styles of Comedy and applied them to his 18 comedies.

 John Garrett (London 1959).  In an essay entitled "The Basis of Shakespearian Comedy," Professor Nevill Coghill…. pointed out that there were two conceptions of comedy current in the sixteenth century, both going back to grammarians of the fourth century, but radically opposed to each other. By the one definition, a comedy was a story beginning in sadness and ending in happiness. By the other it was, in Sidney’s words, "an imitation of common errors of out life" represented "in the most ridiculous and scornful sort that may be; so that it is impossible that any beholder can be content to be such a one." Shakespeare, he declared, accepted the first; Johnson, the second….

A further sub genre of the comedy is the tragicomedy - a serious play with a happy ending. For example, Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale could be considered a tragicomedy because it reaches a tragic climax but ends with a happy conclusion. Here is a list of Shakespearean comedies:

A further subgenre of the comedy is the tragicomedy - a serious play with a happy ending. For example, Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale could be considered a tragicomedy because it reaches a tragic climax but e

The plot is very important in Shakespeare's comedies. They are often very convoluted, twisted and confusing, and extremely hard to follow. Another characteristic of Shakespearean comedy is the themes of love and friendship, played within a courtly society. Songs often sung by a jester or a fool parallel the events of the plot. Also, foil and stock characters are often inserted into the plot.

Love provides the main ingredient for the plot. If the lovers are unmarried when the play opens, they either have not met or there is some obstacle in the way of their love. Examples of the obstacles these lovers go through are familiar to every reader of Shakespeare: the slanderous tongues which nearly wreck love in Much Ado About Nothing; the father insistent upon his daughter marrying his choice, as in A Midsummer Nights Dream; or the expulsion of the rightful Duke's daughter in As You Like It.

Shakespeare uses many predictable patterns in his plays. The hero rarely appears in the opening lines; however, we hear about him from other characters. The hero does not normally make an entrance for a few lines, at least, if not a whole scene. The hero is also virtuous and strong, but he always possesses a character flaw.

In the comedy itself, Shakespeare assumes that we know the basic plot, and he jumps right into it with little or no explanation. Foreshadowing and foreboding are put in the play early and can be heard throughout the drama. Many Shakespearean comedies have five acts. The climax of the play is always during the third act.

nds with a happy conclusion. Here is a list of Shakespearean comedies: 

• All's Well That Ends Well
• As You Like It
• The Comedy of Errors
• 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

THE LIFE OF SHAKESHPEARE

THe results of the almost ferocious industry spent upon unearthing and analysing every date and detail of Shakespeare's life are on whole very merge, and for literary purposes almost entirely unimportant, while with guesswork we have nothing to do. The certainties may be summarised very briefly, William Shakespeare was traditionally born on 23rd of April, and certainly baptised on the 26th of April 1564, at Stafford-on-Avon . His grandfather's name was Richard, that of his father, a dealer in hides, gloves, corn, wood, etc., and the poet's mother was Mary Arden. He had two sisters and three brothers. The family, which through Mary Arden had some small landed property, was at one time prosperous, at others not.

Shakespeare himself married early; the date of the actual ceremony is not known, but bond of marriage passed between him and his wife, Anne Hathaway on November 1582, when he was little more than eighteen, and his wife,  a yeoman's daughter, eight years older. They had three children , Susanna, Hamnet, and Judith. 

Tradition there is- through of no great age, and of exceedingly slight authority- as to his leaving Stafford for London, perhaps in 1585, 1586, or 1587, and perhaps in consequence of deer stealing prank in the neighbouring park of sir Thomas Lucy of Charlotte. He perhaps began his connection with the theatre as a horse-holder; and was pretty certainly as an actor before long.

In 1593 appeared his first work, the remarkable Venus and Adonis, and next year the rather less remarkable Lucrece. He was connected soon after the middle of the last decade of the century with divers theatres, become a shareholder in them and by 1597 could buy a good house, New place, at Stratford, where he afterwards enlarged his property. It is to be noted that his constant residence at London during ten years, his wife desertion of his wife, etc., are all matters of guesswork founded on barely negative evidence. London was his headquarters during this decade from 1586 to 1596, and occasionally visited  by him during third- at close of which, in 1616 on 23rd April, he died. His reputation, through it has steadily grown, has always been great;  there has never from the day of his death to this day been wanting testimony to his position from the greatest living names of the time in English Literature.