Shakespearean Social Comedy -- Saturnalian inversion or soulful exploration of social outsiders?
Barber's book, Shakespeare's Festive Comedy argues for a socially harmonious interpretation of Shakespeare's comedic plays. In contrast, the scholar Richard A. Levine's Love and Society in Shakespeare's Comedy proposes a socially subversive reading of the Shakespearean comedy, as kind of hidden tragedies of 'outsider' figures, rather than Saturnalian revelry. This contrast between the two authors may orginate in the fact that Barber focuses on the major characters of the dramatic texts, while Levine's thesis is detrived from his focus on comedy's outsider figures, such as Shylock and Malvolio. Levine argues that Shakespeare's comedic structure is really one of social critique rather than social affirmation because of the presence of such outsider figures, often excluded from romantic coupling.
Barber begins his book by stating that Shakespeare modeled his early comedies on traditional, pagan holiday entertainments. These were traditional dramatic games of sex and temporary social inversion derived from pagan fertility rituals such as the Saturnalia. What Barber calls "the whole moral superstructure of Elizabethan society," prevented...
"The course of true love never did run smooth" (Lysander, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Act 1, Scene 1). Shakespeare's practically promotes this concept throughout the play, further reinforcing it by using the tension that emerges from the unusual relationships between some of the characters. It is not necessarily love that creates this tension, as it is actually the difficulty related to it that appeals to individuals watching the play.
Shakespearean plays which mirror the dramatist's idea that it is the right of a woman to choose her own husband, without meeting her father's wishes in the matter. The drama "Othello" and the romantic comedy" The Merchant of Venice" are examples. In all three works, Shakespeare has contradicted the perceived roles that women play in the 17th century society through his portrayal of Desdemona, Portia and Jessica. Desdemona, the
He complains to Roderigo that he has been denied promotion because of Cassio's youth, breeding, and better name. "Preferment goes by letter and affection, / Not by the old gradation" (1.1.37-38). Then he vaguely alleges that the Moor may have had a tryst with Emilia, which Emilia later denies, and which seems impossible, given that Emilia and Othello have the most openly adversarial relationship in the play. Iago may
For instance, Constance's supervisor, Professor Claude Knight, frequently plagiarizes her carefully researched and written work. Later, after stealing from her, Knight runs off with a more attractive graduate student, very unlike the Shakespearean heroes Constance is so enamored of, such as Romeo. But because of the heightened absurdity of the pun-ridden scholarship of Constance, and the ugly nature of Knight, the audience does not necessarily see these events as
“One is not born but rather becomes a woman.” This famous statement by the French existential feminist Simone de Beauvoir highlights the fact that gender, as opposed to physical sex, is something into which someone is socialized, not which exists as a universal construct (Butler, 1988, p. 519). The 20th century feminist theorist Judith Butler took De Beauvoir’s thesis one step further to argue that gender is a performance not
Imbalance, even in love, can produce negative and unwanted effects that affect more than two people. The tempest is another Shakespearean play that is set both in the real and fantastic world. The two real are interwoven and deliberately confusing. The action of the play is swinging back and forth in time. Prospero, the Duke of Milan, is recounting for his daughter Miranda the events that led to their living
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