ENGLISH

Shakespeare and Comedy

By Robert Maslen

Book information

Publisher
Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare
Year
2005
ISBN
1904271448, 9781904271444
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
3 MB (3209962 bytes)
Series
Arden Shakespeare: Arden Critical Companions
Edition
1st
Pages
288\281
Time added
2017-04-19 18:54:29
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Description

Comedy was at the centre of a critical storm that raged throughout the early modern period. Shakespeare’s plays made capital of this controversy. In them he deliberately invokes the case against comedy made by the Elizabethan theatre haters. They are filled with jokes that go too far, laughter that hurts its victims, wordplay that turns to swordplay and aggressive acts of comic revenge. In a detailed study of seventeen plays,¬ tragedies and histories as well as comedies,¬ Maslen contends that Shakespeare’s use of the comic mode is always calculatedly unsettling, and that this is part of what makes it pleasurable.

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