The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's Comedies

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Cambridge University Press, 7 d’abr. 2008 - 153 pàgines
Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why do they still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventions of comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuse and move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about love, sex, gender, power, family, community, and class? What place have pain, cruelty, and even death in a comedy? Why all those puns? In a survey that travels from Shakespeare's earliest experiments in farce and courtly love-stories to the great romantic comedies of his middle years and the mould-breaking experiments of his last decade's work, this book addresses these vital questions. Organised thematically, and covering all Shakespeare's comedies from the beginning to the end of his career, it provides readers with a map of the playwright's comic styles, showing how he built on comedic conventions as he further enriched the possibilities of the genre.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

1 Comedy as idea and practice
1
2 Farce
16
3 Courtly lovers and the real world
35
4 Comedy and language
58
5 Romantic comedy
71
6 Problematic plots and endings
103
7 Afterlives
124
Conclusion
138
Further reading
141
Notes
143
Index
151
Copyright

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Frases i termes més freqüents

Passatges populars

Pàgina 54 - Shylock, we would have moneys : ' you say so ; You, that did void your rheum upon my beard And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur Over your threshold : moneys is your suit. What should I say to you ? Should I not say ' Hath a dog money ? is it possible A cur can lend three thousand ducats...
Pàgina 53 - How like a fawning publican he looks ! I hate him for he is a Christian; But more for that in low simplicity He lends out money gratis, and brings down The rate of usance here with us in Venice. If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.
Pàgina 48 - Lovers, and madmen, have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact. One sees more devils than vast hell can hold ; That is, the madman : the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt...
Pàgina 25 - I will be master of what is mine own. She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything...
Pàgina 56 - The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils ; The motions of his spirit are dull as night, And his affections dark as Erebus : Let no such man be trusted.
Pàgina 45 - Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ; Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, -. With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees, And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs, And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes...
Pàgina 64 - The endeavour of this present breath may buy That honour, which shall bate his scythe's keen edge, And make us heirs of all eternity.
Pàgina 7 - But besides these gross absurdities, how all their plays be neither right tragedies, nor right comedies: mingling kings and clowns, not because the matter so carrieth it: but thrust in clowns by head and shoulders, to play a part in majestical matters, with neither decency nor discretion.
Pàgina 104 - ... is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. — Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? quite chop-fallen? Now get you to my lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. — Prithee, Horatio, tell me one thing. HOR. What's that, my lord? HAM. Dost thou think Alexander...

Sobre l'autor (2008)

Penny Gay is Professor of English and Drama at the University of Sydney.

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