Farce and Satire in Shakespeares Comedy of Errors Essays

Farce and Satire in The Comedy of Errors All is not as it seems in The Comedy of Errors. Some have the notion that The Comedy of Errors is a unadulterated and relatively un-Shakespearean make. The plot is, in fact, based largely on Plautuss Menaechmi, a light-hearted comedy in which twins are mistaken for severally other. Shakespeares addition of twin servants is borrowed from Amphitruo, another(prenominal) play by Plautus. Like its classical predecessors, The Comedy of Errors mixes farce and satire and (to a degree) presents us with stock characters. at any rate being based on classical models, is it really fair to bitch The Comedy of Errors a unsafe play? Im not sure it is. Three-quarters of the play is a fast-paced comedy based on mistaken personal identity and wordplay, and practically descending to crude physical humor. The framing plot changes the extreme impression the play makes, mixing pathos, wonder, and joy with the hilarity. But it doesnt turn an essentially funny play into an essentially heartrending one. Still, there are serious elements in the play, and these may stay with us longer than the light ones. These serious elements are not limited to the framing plot, though they often be on it. In fact, what is serious and thought-provoking in the play is often the source of laughter, too. Usually the laughter comes first, and then, if were attentive, well notice that Shakespeare has given us something to count on about. Let me offer some examples. First, the play treats with some seriousness issues cerebrate to coupling jealousy, loyalty, love, misunderstanding, the need for patience, the troubles of the marriage-bed, and the joy and kind embracements that can come with marriage (II.i.27 I.i.39, 43). Second, the... ... to describe marriage. Adriana claims that marriage has made herself and her husband one, undividable incorporate For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall/ A drop of water in the breaking gulf,/ And take unmingl ed thence that drop again,/ Without addition or diminishing,/ As take from me thyself and not me too (II.ii.142, 122, 125-29). Shakespeare doesnt pretend that such a union is easily achieved. He is quite aware that to offer oneself to another is to risk oneself. Works Cited * Fitch, Robert Elliot. Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self. New York Harcourt, 1961. * Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston Houghton Mifflin, 1974. * Wilbur, Richard. Introduction. Tartuffe. By Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere. Trans. Richard Wilbur. San Diego Harvest-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963.