The Cambridge Introduction to Shakespeare's ComediesCambridge University Press, 07.04.2008 - 153 Seiten 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. |
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Seite ix
... actors find their bearings and increase their enjoyment of plays which – as Duke Theseus says – 'need no excuse'. Quotations from Shakespeare's plays are from the individual editions of the New Cambridge Shakespeare, wherever possible ...
... actors find their bearings and increase their enjoyment of plays which – as Duke Theseus says – 'need no excuse'. Quotations from Shakespeare's plays are from the individual editions of the New Cambridge Shakespeare, wherever possible ...
Seite 2
... actors whose job it is to amuse the audience – hopefully, to make them laugh – at various points in the play. When Castiglione speaks of 'the disposition of the minds of the hearers' he is reminding us of the most vital aspect of comedy ...
... actors whose job it is to amuse the audience – hopefully, to make them laugh – at various points in the play. When Castiglione speaks of 'the disposition of the minds of the hearers' he is reminding us of the most vital aspect of comedy ...
Seite 3
... actors who would respond to it, whatever absurdity that may involve. (2) Malvolio's letter scene, and its follow-up, the cross-gartered scene, represents the classic come-down of a self-important figure – the banana-skin joke. Here we ...
... actors who would respond to it, whatever absurdity that may involve. (2) Malvolio's letter scene, and its follow-up, the cross-gartered scene, represents the classic come-down of a self-important figure – the banana-skin joke. Here we ...
Seite 6
... actors in making their offering. There were objections, both moral and intellectual. The anti-theatricalist Stephen Gosson wrote in Plays Confuted in 1582, that 'bawdy Comedies in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been ...
... actors in making their offering. There were objections, both moral and intellectual. The anti-theatricalist Stephen Gosson wrote in Plays Confuted in 1582, that 'bawdy Comedies in Latin, French, Italian, and Spanish, have been ...
Seite 9
... Actors. The French word for actor is com ́edien; it began to be used about the middle of the sixteenth century, 'indicat[ing] a general sense of a new form of entertainment or a new type of occupation'; professional acting, in short.8 ...
... Actors. The French word for actor is com ́edien; it began to be used about the middle of the sixteenth century, 'indicat[ing] a general sense of a new form of entertainment or a new type of occupation'; professional acting, in short.8 ...
Inhalt
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 |
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Häufige Begriffe und Wortgruppen
actors All’s Antonio audience audience’s Bassanio Beatrice and Benedick behaviour Bertram Biron blank verse Branagh’s briefly Cambridge Introduction Celia century characters Claudio clown Comedy of Errors comic commedia commedia dell’arte conventional courtly Cymbeline disguised Don Pedro dromio Duke Elizabethan emotional English Falstaff farce female fiction fight figure film final finally find first fool gender genre Gentlemen of Verona hath Helena Hero heroine Jaques jester joke Katherina King ladies language laugh laughter Lord Love’s Labour’s Lost lovers Lucio male Malvolio marriage masculine merry Midsummer Night’s Dream Mistress offers Olivia Orlando Parolles performance Petrarchan Petruchio play’s plot Portia productions Pyramus Pyramus and Thisbe reflects rhetoric role romantic comedy Rosalind scene sexual Shakespeare Shakespeare’s play Shakespearean comedy Shrew Shylock social soliloquy song speak specifically speech stage story Taming theatre theatrical There’s thou tragedy Twelfth Night Viola witty woman women wooing words young
Beliebte Passagen
Seite 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...
Seite 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.
Seite 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...
Seite 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...
Seite 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.
Seite 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...
Seite 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.
Seite 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.
Seite 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...