The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedies

Cambridge Introductions to Literature

by Penny Gay

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.

Genres: Shakespeare, Literature

164 pages, Paperback

First published April 7, 2008

About the author

Penny Gay is Professor in English Literature and Drama at the University of Sydney. Her publications include Jane Austen and the Theatre; As She Likes It: Shakespeare’s Unruly Women; and The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare’s Comedies.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short read. An introduction to some of Shakespeare’s comedies.

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like its companion volume (The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Tragedies), this concise introduction devotes roughly equal space to each of Shakespeare's ten major comedies, giving a pretty decent amount of information (considering its length: a mere 140 pages), in a clear and accessible style. Unlike Dillon, though, Gay tries to sort the plays into thematic groups - farce, "courtly lovers and the real world", "comedy and language", and romantic comedy - as well as arranging them in roughly chronological order. This approach is partially successful; but Love's Labour's Lost ends up by itself in the language group, and The Merchant of Venice sits rather uncomfortably with the other two plays in the courtly love group (The Two Gentleman of Verona and A Midsummer Night's Dream). Perhaps this is as it should be, as Shakespeare's comedy is a more protean beast than his tragedy; and it means that this book needs an extra chapter to deal with the comic elements in other plays (All's Well That Ends Well is not particularly well served here, I think). Perhaps wisely, Gay does not attempt to draw out too many unifying themes, beyond an illuminating emphasis on the roles of clowns (or clown-figures like Benedick) in so many of the plays. The final chapter on the "afterlives" of the plays (in film, on stage, in opera etc) is tantalisingly brief; and unfortunately there is little attempt to place these plays within the wider Elizabethan comic landscape (Marlowe and Lyly get a brief mention, but Jonson and Middleton don't).

[Helen Mears · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good overview of Shakespeare's Comedies, particularly enjoyed the chapter on Love's Labour's Lost which I think is a very underrated play.