Samuel Johnson tells us that Shakespeare was most comfortable when writing comic plays because they suited his genius best. Tragedy, according to Johnson, did not come naturally to Shakespeare, and there was always something a bit forced about his work in that vein. I don’t agree with him since I like the comedies, tragedies, histories, and romance plays equally, with a slight nod in favor of the tragedies.
Since Shakespeare wrote from ancient models, we should discuss ancient comedy at least briefly. It’s customary to distinguish between Greek Old Comedy like that of Aristophanes (circa 456-386 BCE) and the Greek New Comedy of Menander (circa 342-291 BCE) and other playwrights, such as his later Roman followers Plautus and Terence.
Old Comedy: If you’ve ever read or seen a comedy by Aristophanes (The Clouds, Lysistrata, The Birds, etc.), you know that it’s pretty rough stuff—mainly topical satire about famous politicians and philosophers. The Clouds, for example, is about Socrates as proprietor of the Thinkery or Think-Shop, where all sorts of ridiculously improbable notions are propagated for the benefit of fools. Outrageous, bawdy, bubbly humor is the essence of such plays, and they can pack a genuine political wallop as well: Lysistrata sets forth a plot in which Greek women withhold sexual favors from men until they agree to put an end to the ruinous Peloponnesian War. On the whole, characters are ridiculous in Old Comedy—a main subject is the perennial nature of human folly, selfishness, and vice.
New Comedy: The Greek Menander, and his much later Roman followers Plautus (circa 254-184 BCE) and Terence (circa 190-158 BCE), offer a different brand of comic play. The emphasis is on domestic matters rather than broad political issues. Love, or at least sexual desire treated sympathetically, is central to the action, and there’s also some concern for the relationship between the older generation and the younger, particularly between a father and his son, as well as some interest in relations between people of different status, such as masters and their clever slaves. Still, there’s plenty of fun at the expense of fools, dupes, lovers too old for the person they desire, etc. Stock characters are the order of the day in both kinds of ancient comedy, it seems. New Comedy is hardly rigorous in its morals: the characters who win out tend—surprise!—to be the ones the playwright reckons the audience will like. Sympathy trumps propriety. The popularity of comic mix-ups and disguises suggests that identities can be swapped at will, and because considerations such as wealth and social status are so important in structuring others’ perceptions of a given character, the new identity will be accepted long enough to get the job done.
The structure of Terentian drama is as follows: a) First comes the protasis, in which the basic characters and situation are established. This stage corresponds roughly to the first act of a modern five-act play. b) Then comes the epitasis in which events and characters are interwoven and complicated. This stage corresponds roughly to the second and third acts of a five-act play. c) Next comes the catastasis, in which the plot has just reached its high point, the action seems to be fully wound up, and starts to make its turn downhill, so to speak, towards the concluding event. For example, in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Petruchio asserts his power and marries Kate towards the end of Act 3. But of course that important event hardly concludes the story: Kate must still be “tamed,” which takes place partly during the trip back to Petruchio's lodgings. d) Last comes the final action, the catastrophe, which in comedy turns out to be a happy ending: errors are discovered, and situations become settled.
The modern situation comedy—Seinfeld would be a sophisticated example—is remarkably like New Comedy: a number of silly but mostly sympathetic characters get themselves into and out of preposterous scrapes from one episode to the next in a competitive world, and through it all they don’t change much. They get insulted, taken advantage of, take advantage of others (though not mean-spiritedly), fall in and out of love, misunderstand one another at every turn, get jobs and get fired from jobs, obtain pleasure and ease and then throw it all away on a whim or through error, and they’re ready for the next absurd thing life brings.
Comedy reminds us that we seldom learn as much as we should from our mistakes, but it also gives us credit for being optimists and opportunists in spite of the misfortunes life throws our way. There’s a bit of Bugs Bunny and the Roadrunner in many a comic character: that fur-bearing evildoer Wiley Coyote isn’t going to keep the “poor little Roadrunner” from its appointed rounds (BeepBeep!), nor is Elmer Fudd going to stop Bugs from doing whatever the wascally wabbit wants to do. In comedy, desire is subject to deferral and detour, but not to permanent frustration. The comic orientation towards time is a favorable one: time and chance (accident) are on our side, at least if we are amongst the likeable or generous. In comedy, life is rich and full of opportunities—la vita รจ bella, as the Italians say. This attitude contrasts markedly with that of tragedy, where the world is stark and unforgiving, and our attention is riveted upon the thoughts and actions of a superior character in confrontation with that stark world
Shakespearian Comedy
Shakespeare borrows a fair amount from the ancients in terms of his plots, conventions, and character delineation. Especially in his more rollicking, semi-farcical comedies like The Taming of the Shrew, we encounter a generous heap of characters pursuing their desires in a competitive environment, which results in complicated plots. Such light fare can get confusing at times—as James Calderwood of UC Irvine used to say, you really have to work hard to keep all those Demetriuses (not to mention Hortensios, Lucentios, Gremios, Grumios and Tranios) straight in your head. And again in the lighter comedies, our seekers of pleasure, wealth, and ease tend to be stock characters rather than three-dimensional ones like those in the more substantive comedies. Shakespeare’s genius, it should be said, often pushes a character towards lifelikeness even when a cardboard cutout would have met the minimum standard for success. Petruchio may not be Hamlet, but he’s a clever, thoughtful fellow all the same—one of greater substance than you’ll find in most ancient comedy.
To a recollection of ancient conventions, we must add an understanding of the Christian context that informs Shakespeare’s plays. This is not to say that Shakespeare wears his religious beliefs (be they Protestant or crypto-Catholic, as some biographers claim) on his Elizabethan shirt-sleeve or that he aims to promote whatever religious views he may hold. It is only to say that Christian theology and customs inform his plays of all kinds and figure indirectly to an important extent.
As a main example, let’s consider the concept of charity. I mentioned likeability with respect to ancient comedy: sympathetic characters win. We might reinterpret this notion by applying the Christian opposition between generosity and selfishness or, to use more productive terminology, between charity (charitas) and cupidity (cupiditas). Charitas has to do with a generous outflowing of love for one’s fellow human beings—it is something that helps to unite not only individuals into couples but indeed entire communities into a functioning civil society. It enjoins forgiveness of wrongs and a bearing of optimism and faith in the teeth of adversity. Cupiditas, by contrast, has to do with individual selfishness—a cupiditous person seeks and accumulates riches and status more to lord it over others than really to enjoy what has been gained. Perhaps Jesus’ remark, “he that would save his life shall lose it” (Matthew 16:25) says it best: selfish, greedy, mean-spirited people are losers because they misunderstand the purpose of life, and lose all the more when they win on their own terms. Charles Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge is a fine example of this “lose-by-winning” outlook.
As in ancient comedy, in Shakespeare the comic orientation towards time is favorable: time and chance are friendly, at least if a character is amongst the likeable and generous. Consider the following passage from the Hebrew scriptures, specifically Ecclesiastes 9:11-12, which I’ll copy from the Bishop’s Bible of 1568 that Shakespeare would have known:
11. So I turned me unto other thinges under the sunne, & I sawe that in running it helpeth not to be swift, in battell it helpeth not to be strong, to feeding it helpeth not to be wyse, to riches it helpeth not to be a man of muche understanding, to be had in favour it helpeth not to be cunning: but that all lieth in tyme and fortune. 12. For a man knoweth not his tyme: but like as the fishes are taken with the angle, and as the byrdes are caught with the snare: even so are men taken in the perillous time, when it commeth sodaynly upon them. (Studylight.org’s online Bishop’s Bible, Ecclesiastes 9:11-12.)
In comedy, the characters may want change to happen in just the ways they specify (so that they can obtain their heart’s desire, whatever that may be). They may even want things to stay the same, but that kind of wish is seldom, if ever, granted. Situations—accidents and “tyme” seem to get the better of even the most fervent resolutions, the most serious invocations of dignity. As the Bible says, “all lieth in tyme and fortune.” A generous or charitable character, as described above, will most likely respond to the coming-on of time and accident in an open-minded, open-hearted way and will thereby befriend change, at least implicitly. The best example I can think of in this vein is what the shipwrecked maiden Viola says near the beginning of Twelfth Night: neither giving in to despair about the possible loss of her brother nor worrying about the particulars of her new plan to serve a widowed Illyrian noblewoman (she ends up serving the Duke instead), she declares, “What else may hap, to time I will commit” (1.2.60). Viola will face whatever comes with a bold, open spirit. She is both a woman of substance and a comic optimist. And in at least some of Shakespeare’s comedies, there’s a hint of Providence about the patterns of human desire that drive the plays towards successful resolution.
It is possible to deepen comedy and concentrate on human beings’ potential to change and grow and to accept the limitations imposed upon them by the world. Shakespeare’s best comedies do just that. While his earliest comedies tend towards farce, his more mature work strays from the standard models of ancient comedy and explores characters and subjects at will. The structure of this deeper Shakespearean romantic comedy, according to Northrop Frye and M. H. Abrams, is as follows: several characters leave the corrupt city and go to the forest or some other magical green world, and at last when all is well they return to the city or are about to do so when the play ends. In As You Like It, for example, Rosalind and Celia head for the Forest of Arden when the usurping Duke Frederick banishes Rosalind. In the romance play The Tempest, the setting is a strange island to which fortune or Providence has led Prospero after his banishment as Duke of Milan. In Twelfth Night, Viola and her brother wash ashore in Illyria after a shipwreck.
The aim of romantic comedy is broadly social: the kingdom or other city space is at first badly ruled or in turmoil for some reason—perhaps the values and institutions of the citizens and/or rulers are in need of some re-examination. What is the basis of those values and institutions—can people live comfortably or at all within them? How does a given society preserve order and its values from one generation to the next? Political and social regeneration, continuity for the ruling order, are central. The main characters leave (willingly or otherwise) the city setting and wind up in the countryside, in a pastoral setting. This setting is an enchanted, magic space that allows for the necessary re-examination of values and social roles. Magical transformations occur; characters are put in situations that could not subsist in the city or the kingdom; the forest or countryside’s magic opens up new possibilities. After this reappraisal and readjustment period has been completed, the main characters come together—the young by marriage, the foundational institution of the civil order and its only hope for regeneration, and the path is clear for a return to the corrupt setting from which they came.
