During the 1700s, England’s plays and literature went through a period referred to as Restoration Drama. Throughout the period, there were quite a few playwrights, such as Dryden, Sheridan, and Congreve, and a few different types of drama introduced to the audiences. Dramas included Heroic and three types of comedies, which will be explicated within the essay. It was just before the 18th century that the comedies were becoming more popular with English audiences. Famous playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan wrote his The School for Scandal at this time. The School for Scandal follows the idea of Laughing Comedy with its witty dialogue and the hypocritical characters. Sheridan was quite clever while writing this play by making it somewhat satirical …show more content…
Sheridan turns “satire of Restoration drama to gentle didacticism” (“Laughing Comedy”), which means the play was less focused on satire and more educational. Instead of Sheridan mocking the ways of the English, which he did a little, he focused more on subtly educating his audience. In 1777, Sheridan had just become the manager of Drury Lane, a production company, and realized that there was a high demand for a new play (“The School” 831), which is when he decided to craft The School for Scandal. Although the Comedy of Manners and Laughing Comedy are closely related, The School for Scandal is in fact a Laughing Comedy because of its witty dialogue. The use of witty dialogue was the true reason for its success at Drury Lane and not because of its construction of drama (“Laughing Comedy”); plus, it follows Laughing Comedy standards because “comic dialogue is staged before a range of characters, some of whom find it entertaining and others find it appalling and immoral” (Thompson …show more content…
Lady Sneerwell is a woman who tries to ruin the lives of others because her reputation was ruined in her youth; the audience can interpret this when she states, “I confess I have since known no pleasure equal to the reducing others to the level of my own injured reptutaion” (Act I, Scene I Lines 43-5), which she is saying she is not happy unless others are unhappy like her. Along with Sneerwell, the character of Snake is present. Snake is her close friend and gopher; Snake basically works for Sneerwell by finding out the gossip around town and reporting it to her. Joseph Surface, a man who is quite deceitful, is also another character with a major flaw. Other characters include Sir Benjamin Backbit, who is also a town gossip and slanderer, and Mrs. Candour, another town gossip, and Sir Peter, who is a man that appears to be gullible, and his wife Lady Teazle, who is obsessed with being fashionable. There are also a few other characters within the play that have minor flaws. However, the ones mentioned above are the major flawed characters of the
Levine’s first chapter presents evidence that 19th century Americans of all social classes enjoyed Shakespeare as an integral part of their culture and entertainment. Shakespeare’s works were familiar enough to the populace that a variety of parodies were written and performed for large crowds that displayed their engagement with the works by applause, vegetable-throwing, interruptions, and commands to the actors. Shakespeare’s plays were performed in frontier communities and in cities, in churches and theatres and make-shift stages, attended by people of all classes. He describes the integration of Shakespeare into the Americans’ language and imagination, and explains Shakespeare’s popularity on the basis of its compatibility with 19th century Americans’ oral rhetorical style and their ability to see their own culture’s emphasis on individualism and morality reflected in Shakespeare’s characters and stories.
The average human would think that going to school and getting an education are the two key items needed to make it in life. Another common belief is, the higher someone goes with their education, the more successful they ought to be. Some may even question if school really makes anyone smarter or not. In order to analyze it, there needs to be recognition of ethos, which is the writer 's appeal to their own credibility, followed by pathos that appeals to the writer’s mind and emotions, and lastly, logos that is a writer’s appeal to logical reasoning. While using the three appeals, I will be analyzing “Against School” an essay written by John Taylor Gatto that gives a glimpse of what modern day schooling is like, and if it actually help kids
Schlegel, August Wilhelm. Criticism on Shakespeare s Tragedies . A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. London: AMS Press, Inc., 1965.
Beaumont's failed comedy, 'The Knight of the Burning Pestle', is a unique play that seeks to satirise and burlesque the theatrical and social domain. Crucial to this satire is the collision of two concurrent plots that vie for the audience’s attention. These collisions allow the audience to see opposing ideologies in contrast through the dramatic effect of the breakdown in the boundaries of theatre. It is arguable that this play encourages one to question hierarchy and tradition through exploration of ideology, disputed genres, and Rafe's potential rebellion.
In I Henry IV and II Henry IV, William Shakespeare brings together drama and comedy to create two of the most compelling history plays ever written. Many of Shakespeare's other works are nearly absolute in their adherence to either the comic or tragic traditions, but in the two Henry IV plays Shakespeare combines comedy and drama in ways that seem to bring a certain realism to his characters, and thus the plays. The present essay is an examination of the various and significant effects that Shakespeare's comedic scenes have on I Henry IV and II Henry IV. The Diversity of Society
The differences of these two plays, gives one a sense that any general idea can be broken into a distinct one and not sway away from its intended idea. This means, a comedy can be made into a tragedy, romance, and other themes, and yet still maintain the purpose of providing laughter to the audience. This shows the development of literature over the years, as many more subcategories result because of the contrasts.
...elm. Criticism on Shakespeare s Tragedies . A Course of Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature. London: AMS Press, Inc., 1965.
Wilders, John. "The Problem Comedies." In Wells, Stanley, ed. Shakespeare: Select Bibliographical Guides. London: Oxford UP, 1973.
Mehl, Dieter. Shakespeare's Tragedies: An Introduction. Cambridge, New York, New Rochelle, Melbourne, Sydney: Cambridge U, 1986.
Tragedy, irony and modernism are only a few interpretations of the valued play The Taming of the Shrew by the respected writer William Shakespeare. However, one of the most intriguing and popular of these analyses is comedy. Shakespeare is recognized for writing several plays with comedic genres, a few of which include Much Ado About Nothing and The Comedy of Errors. Comedy, being a complex genre, is composed of many different concepts. This particular play can be interpreted as a Shakespearian comedy, a screwball comedy, a farce, or slapstick.
Otis Wheeler describes how the surge in sentimental dramas was a direct reaction to the coarse comedies of the Restoration wherein man was depicted as ridiculous and nonsensical. In contrast “the drama of sensibility” was a display of the infinite promise of man. In this way the beginnings of the Cult of Sensibility is inextricably linked to the birth of Romanticism, yet where Romanticism preferred the superfluous and exaggerated the Cult of Sensibility preferred the delicate, softer emotions that would bring people together in harmony. As such it is fair to say that although these two styles were borne of a similar distaste for the neoclassical, they developed into very different types of drama. Romanticism created antagonistic protagonists, such as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights.
Although Shakespeare’s plays are generally categorized according to their adherence to the formulaic definitions of histories, romances, comedies, or tragedies, there are several plays that complicate the task of fitting neatly into these groupings. Many literary critics, in fact, have singled out a handful of plays and labeled them ‘Problem Plays’ because they do not fall easily into any of the four categories, though they do loosely adhere to the predicated ‘formula’ of the genre under which they appear in the Folios. Although The Winter’s Tale is not generally considered a problem play, it certainly contains elements that greatly complicate our understanding of the term ‘comedy’ and make it difficult to accept the play as such. In this work, Shakespeare’ s comic vision is so darkened by tragic events that it is questionable whether the play is ever able to recover sufficiently to make the comedic ending acceptable. Although The Winter's Tale is considered a comedy in the formal sense (complete with the marriage at the end), it must also be seen as a serious response to tragedy in that it not only engages various tragic elements, but it also uses those elements to highlight the contradictory and unbelievable nature of its comedic ending. Through the odd construction of the play, the great dramatic risks taken, and the paradoxical conclusion of The Winter's Tale, Shakespeare creates a complex work that seems to suggest that categories like ‘comedy’ are largely ambiguous terms when the predicated comedic ending is so darkened by tragic events that the play does not have the time nor the strength to recover.
Wilders, John. "The Problem Comedies." In Wells, Stanley, ed. Shakespeare: Select Bibliographical Guides. London: Oxford UP, 1973.
Elizabethan times in the 1600s was a progression for the world of the theater. A period named after Queen Elizabeth I of England, it is from this period that modern day society has its foundation for the entertainment industry. From the violence that was prevalent because of the Black Death, people turned to the theater for its poetry and romance. During this time period, there were two types of theatrical performances that were available for the people’s viewing, comedies or tragedies. These two genres were never really intertwined until the time of William Shakespeare. His play, Romeo and Juliet, is an example of both a comedy and a tragedy. It starts off as a comedy with Romeo weeping like a baby because of his love Rosaline, who did not love him back and ends as a tragedy when Romeo and Juliet, a pair of star crossed lovers, commit suicide because the lost of each other. It was also during Shakespeare’s time that writer were finally acknowledged by the people. Before this time, writers were not considered upper classman. Another group of people that began to rise into a higher social class were the actors. Actresses were not present back then because women were not allowed on stage. It was considered unladylike to have a female actor. Men played all the parts. Theater owners were dependent on actors to make them a profit. Rehearsals for the plays were fairly short, only lasting for about a week. The performances themselves would only show for three to four days.
"This play we must call a comedy, tho' some of the incidents and discourses are more in a tragic strain; and that of the accusation of Hero is too shocking for either tragedy or comedy" (Charles Gildon 1714)