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.
目錄:
Preface
1 Introduction: comedy as idea and practice
2 Farce: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Merry
Wives of Windsor
3 Courtly lovers and the real world: Two Gentlemen of Verona, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice
4 Comedy and language: Love’s Labour’s Lost
5 Romantic comedy: Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth
Night
6 Problematic plots and endings: clowning and comedy post-Hamlet :
Measure for Measure, All’s Well That Ends Well, The Winter’s Tale,
Cymbeline, The Tempest
7 The afterlives of Shakespeare’s comedies
Conclusion
Further reading
Notes
Index