2. Early comedies (1593-96):
The Comedy of Errors
The Taming of the Shrew
Two Gentlemen of Verona
Love’s Labour’s Lost
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Their language is witty skillfully rhetorical and makes use
of refined imagery
•Rhyme alternates with blank verse
•A mixture of romantic and farcical elements
3. Mature Comedies (1596-1600):
The Merchant of Venice
Much Ado About Nothing
As You Like It
Twelth Night
The Merry Wives of Windsor
They are called ‘romantic’ because of their predominant
love theme but they also strike sad notes
4. Problem plays (1600-1604):
All’s Well That Ends Well
Measure for Measure
Troilus and Cressida
They follow the structure of comedy but they
present characters involved in serious moral conflicts
of difficult solution
A pessimistic outlook of life
5. Romances (1607-1612):
Pericles
Cymberline
The Winter’s Tale
The Tempest
The unreality of the story
Romantic love
The appearance and intervention of supernatural beings
Conclusion with peace, harmony and reconciliation
6. •He exploited brilliantly the stage-craft, the
acting and the public taste of his days
•A unique ability to render experience in poetic
language and an intuitive understanding of
human psychology
•The insight with which he presents states of mind and
complexities of attitude
•His ability to create living worlds of people
7. •Comic plots usually start with an initial
calamity which presents a challenge.
•The protagonists meet the challenge with
confidence and turn it to their own advantage.
As a consequence of apparent misfortune the hero and
heroine of comedy find love when wrongs are redressed.
•Storylines often require heroines to disguise themselves as men
•The conventional end of comedy includes
a double or triple wedding.
8. •Its main sources are Latin authors as Plautus
and Ovid, Italian tales and plays and non-
dramatic popular prose-romances of Medieval
English tradition.
•Lively and witty heroines
•The delicate and happy treatment of love
•The undertones of melancholy or prevented disaster
•The element of fairy tale or folklore
•An emerging world of moral and psychological
realism
COMEDIES
10. •The action is generally concentrated on a single isolated individual
who finds himself in opposition to his world.
•His name usually gives the name to the play
•The starting point is a sort of challenge which presents itself like a
blow of fate
•The tragic hero either tries to avoid the challenge or takes
a course of action which is fatal to himself
•Fate as an evil force which works against its victims
through no fault of their own or a crucial mistake
11. OTHELLO
•A revenge play which shows the ways the central hero
is victim of his weaknesses : he can’t believe his luck
• Iago as a real villain, victim of his ambition
•The revenger’s purpose is not merely to punish wickedness
but to restore order.
His final suicide must read in that light
•The theme of revenge is connected to the themes of nature
of order and the good ruler
12. •Appearance versus reality
• Iago stands for a Machiavellian character
•It moves the centre of attention from a private vengeance
to an enquiry into the basis of human existence and vanity
of things
It focuses on
•many issues as legitimacy of power, respect for parents,
death, suicide, the existence of a supernatural order,
the other
13. •Values as chastity, honour, loyalty, friendship
•Lack of values as inconstancy, hypocrisy, betrayal,
•Kinds of relationship as family bonds
•Emotions as love, jealousy, hatred
•Social forms as kingship, social hierarchy
•A pessimistic outlook of life
