Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Comedies vs Tragedies

After reading about 5 of Shakespeare's plays, I have begun to notice an extreme difference in his style, construction, and overall flow depending on the genre.  First, the comedies.  The first comedy we read, A Midsummer Night's Dream, begins with a marriage - a very good sign for the rest of the play to follow. Throughout the plays, there is strong evidence of wit and sophistication in the majority of the characters, even though most comedies include characters of lower classes than the histories or tragedies.  In many instances, we even see the lower class teasing and outwitting the upper class - something that was very seldom seen in the Elizabethan age.  Finally, in Shakespeare's comedies, we see many more characters and a wider view of society as a whole.  As for structure, the comedies are usually much more confusing to read and follow due to the multiple levels of interwoven plots and plays within plays.  With Shakespeare's tragedies on the other hand, the structure is the exact same for almost all of his plays.  He uses the structure of the Freytag Pyramid, which consists of 5 parts: Exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouncement.  Pretty much, if you want to sift through the crazy language of his tragedies and get to the meat of the play, read act 3.  In regards to his writing style in the tragedy genre, we see a much bigger central character or hero, who has a tragic flaw that proves to be his demise in act 3.  Shakespeare writes the character so that he retains our sympathy while still causing us to feel pity and terror for what will happen to him.  The tragedies are always focused around strong noble families, and the lowest class usually seen is a guard - a stark difference from comedies.  Towards the end of his writing career, Shakespeare began to meld the two genres together in what became romances... apparently he got tired of the same old structure.

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