SHAKESPEARES GENRES Focus on Comedy Shakespeares Genres Comedy

SHAKESPEARE’S GENRES Focus on Comedy

Shakespeare’s Genres Comedy Merry Wives Twelfth Night Tragedy Titus Andronicus History Henry V Romance The Tempest

Comedy: Jokes are Serious. Really. • Safe space to deal with fears and anxieties; or, don’t try this at home • Safety valve for social tensions: carnivalesque • Verbal irony: saying one thing and meaning another • Social regulation: laughter at someone • Social regulation and release (see carnivalesque): laughter with someone

Safe space to deal with fears and anxieties; or, don’t try this at home • If I slip on a banana and die it’s a tragedy • If I slip on a banana and fall in a vat of chocolate, from which I emerge a sweet dessert but unharmed, it’s a comedy

Safety valve for social tensions: carnivalesque Mardi Gras -Carnivalesque gender inversion, drinking and masking

Safety valve for social tensions: carnivalesque Mardi Gras -Holiday foolery

Verbal irony: saying one thing and meaning another You: That’s your new hairstyle? I’m really impressed with it. You must have done it yourself. What’s really amazing is how you trimmed the back. Me: You know I paid $150 for this haircut from a stylist. That’s not nice. Does it really look terrible? No: Of course not. I was only joking! Me: It really looks bad, doesn’t it?

Social regulation: laughter at someone • • • Don’t be clueless Don’t try to hard Don’t try to be inspirational in a nerdy way

Social regulation and release (see carnivalesque): laughter with someone • • We feel as one when we laugh together at our boss We feel as one when we laugh together at nerdy attempts to instill good values

Social regulation and release (see carnivalesque): laughter with someone Festivity: Carnival’s corollary: release from social norms > celebration of social order through happy ritual

Renaissance Comedy • Carnival Release (disorder) • Festival togetherness (social order restored). Festival is usually a marriage • Comedies have happy endings • Happy ending creates safe space for rehearsal of tensions, anxieties or fears • Happy ending brings the society together from those tensions, anxieties or fears

And always remember …