Alexandra Elchert's List: Shakespeare's Comedies

• His earliest plays are mostly  comedies and histories—The Two Gentlemen of Verona and  The Taming of the Shrew are probably the very earliest. He  wrote the first play (known as 2 Henry VI) in the  four‐play cycle known as the ‘first tetralogy’  in   1591  , completing it with the best known of his earlier histories,  Richard III, the following year.

• Unsurprisingly, it's the major masterpieces that have proven most popular in terms of British film and television adaptations. Twelfth Night is the winner in terms of numbers, followed closely by A Midsummer Night's Dream, though As You Like It holds the record for the number of big-screen films (three, with a fourth in production as of mid-2005), though the BBC Television Shakespeare's completist remit has ensured that even The Two Gentlemen of Verona has had one complete production. Much Ado About Nothing has been the biggest international hit, courtesy of Kenneth Branagh's star-studded 1993 film, and Franco Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew (1967) shrewdly capitalised on the popularity and offscreen reputation of its stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

• Traditionally, William Shakespeare’s plays have been classified into 3 groups such as comedies, tragedies and histories
• Comedy in the period of Elizabethan was entirely different from the current comedy.
• The comedy written by Shakespeare ends on a happy ending including marriage for all those characters who are not married and a style and tone that is more cheerful as compared to other plays of Shakespeare

• The comedies of Shakespeare also likely to have the following:-

   
   
  • Mistaken identities
   
  • Unification and separation
   
  • Recurrent use of puns
   
  • A clever servant
   
  • An effort of young lovers to conquer troubles which is frequently obtainable by elders
   
  • Interconnecting and multiple plots
   
  • Delicate tensions within a family
• 1599 and early 1600

• The Comedy of Errors

   

  This comedy was written in the year 1592 to 1594 by William Shakespeare. This is one of his shortest plays and most ridiculous as the humor is obtained from the wordplay and puns and a large portion arrives from mistaken identity and slapstick. The Comedy of Errors is unique for examining the traditional harmonies.

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• a stage play of a light and amusing character with a happy conclusion to its plot

• The Summary of As You Like It
   As You Like It is one of  the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The heroine, Rosalind, is  one of his most inspiring characters and has more lines than any of  Shakespeare's female characters. Rosalind, the daughter of a banished  duke falls in love with Orlando the disinherited son of one of the  duke's friends. When she is banished from the court by her usurping  uncle, Duke Frederick , Rosalind takes on the appearance of a boy  calling herself Ganymede. She travels with her cousin Celia and the  jester Touchstone to the Forest of Arden, where her father and his  friends live in exile. Themes about life and love, including aging, the  natural world, and death are included in the play. New friends are made  and families are reunited. By the end of the play Ganymede, once again  Rosalind, marries Orlando. Orlando and Rosalind, Oliver and Celia,  Silvius and Phebe, and Touchstone and Audrey all are married in the  final scene. Oliver becomes a gentler, kinder young man so the Duke   changes his ways and turns to religion and so that the exiled Duke,  father of Rosalind, can rule once again. Act II, Scene 7 features a  great soliloquy by William Shakespeare which begins:

• This drama is one of the  great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The Comedy of Errors relies  heavily on mix-ups and witty dialogue. The characters include two sets  of twins, Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of  Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse. Dromio of Ephesus is the slave of  Antipholus of Ephesus, and Dromio of Syracuse is the slave of Antipholus  of Syracuse. Antipholus of Ephesus is unaware that he has a twin  brother, Antipholus of Syracuse. And Dromio of Ephesus is unaware that  he also has a twin brother, Dromio of Syracuse. Farcical mix-ups occur  when all the twins all meet in Ephesus. The themes of the play are  reality, time, coincidence and love.  

    

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• This drama is one of the  great comedy plays by William Shakespeare. The Comedy of Errors relies  heavily on mix-ups and witty dialogue. The characters include two sets  of twins, Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of  Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse. Dromio of Ephesus is the slave of  Antipholus of Ephesus, and Dromio of Syracuse is the slave of Antipholus  of Syracuse. Antipholus of Ephesus is unaware that he has a twin  brother, Antipholus of Syracuse. And Dromio of Ephesus is unaware that  he also has a twin brother, Dromio of Syracuse. Farcical mix-ups occur  when all the twins all meet in Ephesus. The themes of the play are  reality, time, coincidence and love.  

    

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