Mistero Buffo Analysis

In his play, The Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare uses comedy to both entertain the audience while adding a whole new dimension of sarcasm to his play.  The Comedy of Errors follows the story of long lost twin, Antipholus of Syracuse, in his search for his twin, Antipholus of Ephesus. When he stops in Ephesus, Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, receive special treatment as they are confused for their counterparts. This dynamic allows for a hysterical play. At one point, Dromio of Syracuse assumes the role of Dromio of Ephesus while guarding the gate as the family is eating. Dromio of Syracuse states “Mome, malt-horse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch! / Either get thee from the door or sit down at the / hatch”

William Shakespeare is the world’s pre-eminent dramatist whose plays range from tragedies to tragic comedies, etc. His general style of writing is often comparable to several of his contemporaries, like Romeo and Juliet is based on Arthur Brooke’s narrative poem, “The tragical history of Romeo and Juliet”. But Shakespeare’s works express a different range of human experience where his characters command the sympathy of audiences and also are complex as well as human in nature. Shakespeare makes the protagonist’s character development central to the plot.

     Shakespeare based his comedy As You Like It primarily on three other works.  Its plot follows the basic structure of Rosalynde, published in 1590 by Thomas Lodge.  The Tale of Gamelyn, written by an unknown author in the mid-fourteenth century, is a violent Middle English narrative that was found among Chaucer's papers and provides further details for Shakespeare's work.  With the Forest of Ardenne serving as an escape for our main characters, Shakespeare takes his details from the countless Robin Hood ballads popular in Medieval England.  This paper will examine how Shakespeare's adaptations and alterations of emphasis and plot from these source works have turned our attention to the

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

Throughout the film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, there were many different uses of comedic elements used. Many of these comedic elements were expressed in ways regarding the history and culture around the mid-evil time period. However, when expressing different part of culture and history throughout the time period, the creators of the film altered the culture and history to add for a more comedic effect. Throughout this paper, it will examine the parts of history and culture that were altered, such as the religion aspect, the knights, as well as Feudalism.

William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors (1594) reflects Shakespeare’s skill at combining comedy into tragic setting to put forward social issues and reflections. In the passage in Act II, scene I, lines 86 – 101, the monologue of Adriana and her interactions with her sister are examples of Shakespeare’s continuation of theme and motif, incorporated into character building. He does this through his use of language and formal techniques.

Playwrights during the Elizabethan era explored characters with imbalanced humours – Shakespeare presented the melancholy Ophelia in Hamlet, and the sanguine Juliet in Romeo and Juliet, the choleric Kate in Taming of the Shrew and phlegmatic Hermione in Winter’s

Literary critics frequently insinuate that Claudio’s love for Hero does not epitomize true Shakespearian love. Critics like Stephanie Chamberlain and Jennifer Low claim that his affection roots in societal aspirations and material desires. Claudio, however, is not bereft of genuine love for Hero; rather, his actions result from the insecurities that typically accompany deep affection. In her essay “The Duelist as a Hero,” Low criticizes Claudio’s feelings towards Hero for being as shallow as his pockets are deep.

The story Don Quixote is a burlesque, mock epic of the romances of chivalry, in which Cervantes teaches the reader the truth by creating laughter that ridicules. Through the protagonist, he succeeds in satirizing Spain’s obsession with the noble knights as being absurdly old fashioned. The dynamics of the comedy in this story are simple, Don Quixote believes the romances he has read and strives to live them out, and it is his actions and the situations that he finds himself in during his adventures that make the reader laugh. We can define comedy as something that entertains the reader and that makes us want to laugh out loud and Cervantes succeeds in doing this through his use of

Shakespearean comic world has a nature of light-heartedness and optimism, in the setting of Messina, everybody either knows, or wants to know, everybody else’s business. Gossip, hearsay and eavesdropping have taken up great proportions of characters’ lives in the world of Messina. It is a place where ‘very few can manage appropriate seriousness’. And among all, the famous Benedick-Beatrice plot in Much Ado About Nothing produces the most whimsical images and

“…by the end tears are as near as laughter”. Compare both playwrights’ juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy in The History Boys and Translations. Comedy, defined to be “a play characterized by its humorous or satirical tone and its depiction of amusing people or incidents, in which the characters ultimately triumph over adversity.” The juxtaposition of comedy and tragedy in The History Boys is more prominent than the highlighted tragic aspects, alongside the occasional glimpse of comedy in Friel’s Translations.

In a quote widely attributed to Molière, he claims to have suffered from “the fault of being a little more sincere than proper,” a flaw that led him to write satirical plays that have stood the test of time. Works like The Misanthrope, The Imaginary Invalid, and Tartuffe still enchant audiences four hundred years after their creation. The reason these plays have survived the rise and fall of the French enlightenment, when they were written, as well as the trials of numerous translations, is their social commentary and unique cutting humor that was not merely a dissection but, rather, a vivisection of the evolving faults and follies of the human race. Molière’s literary scalpel was sharpened by his own education,

In Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night, the characters endure the fruits of their foolishness at the end of the play, but Malvolio endures a greater suffering and greater embarrassment than the rest of the characters. This is not simply by chance or whimsy: but this is Shakespeare’s stratification of the vices that a person may take upon him or herself. With this stratification, Shakespeare allocates Malvolio’s vices of pride, usurping the social order, and dour temperament as the worst of character flaws, and that is why Malvolio receives the harshest punishment.

In Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night or What you Will, the characters are involved in a plot complete with trickery, disguise, and love. Each character is defined not by his or her gender or true identity, but by the role they are forced to take because of the complicated situation that arises. Unlike their gender, the speech the characters give an insight to their true personalities. In the Twelfth Night, the character Duke Orsino uses flowery and over-dramatic language, long poetic sentence structure, and melodramatic metaphors to display his overemotional romantic nature despite the different emotions in his various speeches.

Throughout history there have different styles of comedy that inherit different aspects of society during that time. During the Restoration period, there is one author who stands out from the rest and is known as the father of comedy of manners and that author is Molliere. One of his most notable pieces of work was the Misanthrope; thats core principles are based on the comedy of manners.The fundamentals of the comedy of manners often have a multiple consistencies that are true to most plays written during that time. It’s sole purpose is to get a satirical perspective at the life, manners and social aspect of the upper class and aristocrats. Itt is considered high comedy due to the fact that it creates a critical perspective of the life of the upper classes, unlike low comedy which serves no other purpose than to create laughter. Plays which use comedy of manners often poke fun at the character’s outlooks on life, their manners toward each other and their view toward lower social classes. In general the characters of plays/books during this time have very generic roles such as the fool, hypocrite, the jealous lover, ect… Additionally the plots of these plays usually are surrounding a complicated love situation that puts a few characters in conflict with each other. These principles are true to plays written during that time, especially Moliere’s Misanthrope which represent the core beliefs of the comedy of manners.