The Comedies

William Shakespeare wrote many plays in various genres, and among them were comedies. In each of his comedies, he had fools, blocking figures, comical plots, along with an ending containing a feast and a wedding. Two of his works that we analyzed in class were: A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.

Passage Comparison:

A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play not to be taken seriously. The delivery of the play rhymes to provide a childish, lighthearted feeling to every situation. Events of high importance are casted aside and are spoken with the same emotion as an everyday thing. The play mocks seriousness and love. In the beginning Egeus, father of Hermia, announces that Hermia would become a nun before she could marry her true love, Lysander, for the sole reason that Egeus preferred Demetrius. The characters then flee to the enchanted forest in which they are free to love anyone of their choosing without the Egeus's knowledge. The characters in the play are turned into fools when they fall in love. They act in irresponsible ways and fight. Helena, head-over-heels in love with Demetrius only addresses him in words of affection while he returns her kind admiration with insults and abuse. Also, in Act III, when Lysander was enchanted by the love spell, Hermia and Helena got into a fight over him because he loved Helena instead of Hermia. The fight got so out of control that the two women started to mock each other's height. The women turned a serious situation of love to a foolish insult, lacking seriousness. Love makes the characters foolish to the extreme that the supernatural notice and exclaim the malapropism of, "What fools these mortals be (Act III)." 

The Taming of the Shrew is a play in which Baptista's unwanted and wild daughter, Kate, must be married before the desired and beautiful Bianca could be attainable. The men in the play devise up a plan in which to find a man capable of marrying Kate in order to obtain Bianca's love. Petruchio, a man infatuated with money, was intrigued by the wealth he would inherit and became the candidate for Kate's husband to be. By Petruchio doing so, symbolized that the play mocks love because it is not the person that wins the heart, it is the money. The couple was comparable, both equally nasty and bitter, Kate with her insulting tongue and Petruchio with his incomprehensible taming methods like starving Kate. He uses a pun and plays on her name Kate for cat, he announces, "For I am he am born to tame you Kate; And bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate; Conformable as other household Kates (53)." He refers to her as a "wild Kate" to further emphasize how out of social lines Kate is and that she needs to be tamed, and he is there to do so. 

Commentary on Genre: 

These comedies were written for complete entertainment purposes. They were designed for laughter and ridiculous plot lines, full of fools and mishaps. The plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Taming of the Shrew, had many similarities. Both involved fathers that controlled the marriage of their daughters. Egeus would not let Hermia marry Lysander, her true love because he preferred Demetrius and Baptista would not allow a man to marry his highly adored daughter, Bianca, before her wretched sister, Kate, was married off. Another similarity were the insults between "lovers" in the plays. Helena, in love with Demetrius, would flower him with kind words while he would insult and kick her in return. Kate, loathing Petruchio, let her tongue roll out the most vile insults to her "lover" and Petruchio would return her name calling with terms of admiration and affection. Both plays had the same theme of mocking love as well. Love turned the mortals foolish in A Midsummer Night's Dream, while money was worth more than love in The Taming of the Shrew. 

Personal Reflection: 

I did enjoy reading the comedies. Many of the events that took place casted a smile over my face. The scenes of the two extremes of love and hate were the most entertaining because of the insults versus affection. The only thing I was not a fan of was how the characters changed roles. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Lysander and Hermia were a couple and Demetrius and Helena were a "couple." Then both Lysander and Demetrius fell out of love with Hermia and in love with Helena. It was just tough to follow. The same events happened in The Taming of the Shrew. Tranio posed as Lucentio along with various other characters posing as someone they were not. It was just difficult to follow along and keep track. But other than the confusing aspects of the play, William Shakespeare did a near flawless job on his comedies.