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Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction
Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction
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  • Identifies the five distinctive qualities of Shakespearean comedy, and makes connections across all of Shakespeare's comic plays, including so-called 'romances' such as The Tempest or The Winter's Tale
  • Analyses Shakespeare's comedic plays in the context of their time
  • Explains theories of comedy from Aristotle to Freud and Bergson

    
From The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early 1590s to The Two Noble Kinsmen at the end of his career around 1614, Shakespeare wrote at least eighteen plays that can be called 'comedies': a far higher number than that for any other genre in which he wrote. So what is a Shakespearean comedy? We associate these plays with such themes as mistaken identities, happy marriages, and exuberant cross dressing, but how representative are these of the oeuvre as a whole? 
    
In this Very Short Introduction, Bart van Es explores the full range of the playwright's comic writing, from the neat classical plotting of early works like The Comedy of Errors to the corrupt world of the so-called problem plays, written in the middle years of Shakespeare's life. Examining Shakespeare's influences and sources, van Es compares his plays to those of his rivals, and looks at the history of the plays in performance, from the biographies of Shakespeare's original actors to the plays' endless reinvention in modern stage productions and in films. Identifying the key qualities that make Shakespearean comedy distinctive, van Es traces the changing nature of Shakespeare's comic writing over the course of a career that spanned nearly a quarter century of theatrical change.

Index: 

Introduction
World
Wit
Love
Time
Character
Endings
Further Reading
Index

About the author: 

Bart van Es studied at Cambridge and is now a University Lecturer and Fellow in English at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He is the author of Spenser's Forms of History (OUP, 2002) and Shakespeare in Company (OUP, 2013), and is the editor of A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005). He has published many articles on Renaissance poetry and drama and is now conducting research into the children's acting companies that were rivals to Shakespeare's stage.

"Aimed at a general readership, the slim volume is nonetheless carefully researched and full of original ideas and connections." - Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"cover[s] an impressive amount of literary and historical ground, and convey[s] a suitably sizeable serving of Shakespeare knowledge." - Shakespeare Magazine

Product details

ISBN : 9780198723356

Author: 
Bart van Es
Pages
144 Pages
Format
Paperback
Size
113 x 174 mm
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Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction

Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction

Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction