For Thursday's class, read Chapter 5 from the William Shakespeare book, and we'll continue our discussion about Shakespeare's background by discussing his comedies. What did he understand a 'comedy' was, and what makes his comedies all a generic unit, like his tragedies, or histories? NO QUESTIONS to respond to, though we'll have an in-class writing over it on Thursday which will feed into your Paper #1 assignment (which I'll always hand out).
However, here are some ideas to consider as you read...
* Shakespeare wrote basically four types of plays: comedies, tragedies, histories, and what we call 'romances,' which combine the first two categories. What does it say about him that at least half of his entire output was comedy? Why might he have prefered this genre to any of the others, considering he kept going back to it, even at the end of his career?
* Of all Shakespeare's plays, the comedies are often the most derivative (or borrowed, that is), as almost all the plots come from other plays, books, and poems. Why do you think Shakespeare preferred his comedies to be so second-hand? Is this still true of comedies today? Are most of them 'reboots'?
* What consistent themes, characters, or situtations seem to crop up most often in his comedies, according to Wells' summary of them? Why might these have particularly interested Shakespeare?
* Why does Shakespeare always set his plays in far-off locales when they could have just as easily taken place in England (and indeed, many of them reference English places and some characters have English names)? What might this have allowed him to do under the guise of "comedy"?
* How do Shakespeare's later comedies differ from his earlier ones? What might have accounted for this biographically? Artistically?
* Why might have Shakespeare gravitated more and more towards prose by the middle of his career (around the time of Much Ado)?
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