The Humor in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

The Humor in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night

Comedy should entertain a general audience. It is usually a dramatic

work that is light, and often satirical in tone. Horace Walpole once

said that "life is like a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to

those who feel." This can be said to be true in as we tend to laugh at

comic characters, particularly comic double acts, but "feel" with

tragic heroes.

The audience at a comedy is likely to feel itself to be slightly

superior to, and therefore distant from, the comic figures, even the

romantic leads, if it is to laugh at their follies.

Comedy can be defined in three main types; visual, verbal and

situational. Visual humour is usually accessible images, pictures and

the obvious. Verbal humour is the spoken satire, word-play and

stories. Situational humour takes place around a plot created by an

author.

The cynic who stated that "laugh and the world laughs with you, cry

and you cry alone" was possibly a theatre fanatic. In Shakespeare's

plays, this distinction has the effect of isolating the characters at

the end of his tragedies, and uniting them at the end of the comedies.

Byron may have been misogynistic when he stated that "all comedies end

in marriage" but the ceremony operates as a mark of unification and

social harmony in the closure of a comedy.

On first view, the Twelfth Night has all the basic comic elements;

clowns, double acts, women dressed as men, men dressed as priests and

a "sublimely funny" servant, only funny because of his distinct lack

of humour.

Harold Bloom believes that Twelfth Night is indeed still funny to a

modern day audience.

In ...

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...r others who cannot return their passion. It contains all

the situational, visual and verbal elements of comedy, along with

satire, perplexity and commotion.

Twelfth Night is, without a doubt, still funny to a modern day

audience. It comprises all three main elements of comedy: visual,

verbal and situational, and combines them with the follies of the

comic double act, confusion of disguise and the ultimate love of all

the characters. To any audience, 1601 or otherwise, Twelfth Night is

an amalgamation of satire, confusion and fervour, ordained to

entertain and interest a general audience. Today, a modern audience

will still find the exploits of Sir Toby, Feste and Maria hilarious,

still find the jokes droll, although some have lost their meaning over

the centuries, and still revel in the visual aspect of Twelfth Night.