Shakespeare and the Uses of ComedyUniversity Press of Kentucky, 15. 7. 2014 - 280 strán (strany) In Shakespeare's hand the comic mode became an instrument for exploring the broad territory of the human situation, including much that had normally been reserved for tragedy. Once the reader recognizes that justification for such an assumption is presented repeatedly in the earlier comedies—from The Comedy of Errors to Twelfth Night—he has less difficulty in dispensing with the currently fashionable classifications of the later comedies as problem plays and romances or tragicomedies and thus in seeing them all as manifestations of a single impulse. Bryant shows how Shakespeare, early and late, dutifully concerned himself with the production of laughter, the presentation of young people in love, and the exploitation of theatrical conventions that might provide a guaranteed response. Yet these matters were incidental to his main business in writing comedy: to examine the implications of an action in which human involvement in the process of living provides the kind of enlightenment that leads to renewal and the continuity of life. With rare foresight, Shakespeare presented a world in which women were as capable of enlightenment as the men who wooed them, and Bryant shows how the female characters frequently preceded their mates in perceiving the way of the world. In most of his comedies Shakespeare also managed to suggest the role of death in life's process; and in some—even in plays as diverse as A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, and The Tempest—he gave hints of a larger process, one without beginning or end, that may well comprehend all our visions—of comedy, tragedy, and history—in a single movement. |
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... King Library for generous assistance more times than they will remember. I am grateful, too, for the encouragement and support of my colleagues, especially John Clubbe, John Cawelti, Jerome Meckier, Armando Prats, and Robert Hemenway. I ...
... King Lear and The Tempest, Shakespeare might have found at least interesting, if not congenial, Henri Bergson's notions of being as duration rather than as static order and of organic life in all its forms as the product of ...
... King of France), offstage, removes from the proceedings the most determined and forthright advocate of mating that the plot has to offer. Thus, instead of providing a release, the removal by death of the Princess's father brings ...
... King of France and suggest that the denial it seems to entail is only temporary—a deferral, as the wiser young ladies have all suggested it may be. Thus in this play is the business of comedy served, which otherwise might have gone ...
... King of Navarre's proposal to impose a three-year vow of celibacy, reminds his colleagues: . . . well you know here comes in embassy The French king's daughter with yourself to speak— A maid of grace and complete majesty— About ...
Obsah
1 | |
14 | |
27 | |
40 | |
5 A Midsummer Nights Dream | 57 |
6 The Merchant of Venice | 81 |
7 The Taming of the Shrew | 98 |
8 The Merry Wives of Windsor | 114 |
10 As You Like It | 146 |
11 Twelfth Night | 165 |
12 Troilus and Cressida | 179 |
13 Alls Well That Ends Well and Measure for Measure | 203 |
14 Cymbeline and The Winters Tale | 221 |
15 The Tempest | 233 |
Notes | 253 |
Index | 266 |