Midsummer Night/ Shakespeare After reading the document about Comedy and especially Shakespearean Comedy, reflect on your own personal theories about the comic: humor is a very complex human phenomeno
Shakespeare: Comedies/Histories| ENG 2750| Professor Mitchell| Comedy| Page 6
Shakespearean Comedy: Theory and CharacteristicsOne of the funny things about comedy is that if you have to explain WHY something is funny, it ceases to BE funny! Thus, it might seem strange that in order to approach one of Shakespeare’s comedies, in this case, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we first need to lay out some theories of comedy and then discuss the specific thematic obsessions and methods of Shakespearean (and Elizabethan) comedy itself.
Let’s start with a paradox about the comic mode, or genre: (genre is the French word used to describe types of literature, so, for example, comedy and tragedy are both genres of drama (it is related to the Latin word, Genus, used in biology to describe related groups of organisms). The paradox is that comedy can be both universal and really specific. That is, some things are generally always funny to us as humans while other things are or were only funny in specific cultural contexts.
Universal comedy: The broader (or cruder) the comedy is, the more universally it operates as funny. Slapstick and Farce have almost universal appeal. Someone slips on a banana peel, someone gets a pie in the face, etc. and everyone will laugh. Not surprisingly, all cultures and historical times enjoy(ed) humor related to bodily functions, others falling or running into things, people doing dumb things, and especially sexually-charged humor. I have more to say about WHY we find these kinds of things funny below.
Specific and Time-Sensitive comedy: On the other hand, a lot of humor is very topical, local, and has a short expiration date, after which it is no longer funny. Satire, sarcasm, intellectual humor, imitation, etc. all depend on specific knowledge for them to be funny. If someone does an impression of a politician or a celebrity, it is only funny IF the audience knows who is being mocked. This is why, say, watching an old episode of Saturday Night Live from the late 1970s, where Chevy Chase does an imitation of President Ford is only funny if you were alive back then and remembered how that President was.
Now think about the implications for reading one of Shakespeare’s comedies. There will be some things in it that are universally funny; that is, still funny after all these years. However, there will be a lot of things that are “lost in translation” so to speak; that is, specific plays on words, references, old customs, etc. that would have been very funny to an Elizabethan audience, but which we will not catch and thus not recognize as funny (now, a footnote will help explain WHY it was funny back then, but it won’t necessarily make us laugh out loud [remember how the joke isn’t funny if you have to have it explained to you]). Keep this in mind as you read and see the play…
Theories of Comedy: Philosophers often try to develop systems of thought that try to explain many human phenomena. Aristotle wrote a treatise on Tragedy, for example, where he developed a detailed theory about why tragedy exists and why we respond to it, say, while watching it enacted on stage. (we will discuss Aristotelian tragedy when we get to Hamlet). Unfortunately, if Aristotle had written a similar book on comedy, it has been lost (see the excellent novel The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, for a story about just such a book having existed). However, many other thinkers, especially psychologists, have devoted time and thought to theorizing about how and why we find things to be funny.
Freud thought that the comic was connected to our darker urges (big surprise): for him, laughter was a deeply primal emotional activity that had survival value. You laughed because the tiger got someone else, not you! This actually goes a long way toward explaining the almost universal existence of what we call the “sick joke”: within hours, sometimes, of something bad happening, sick jokes about it are already circulating (these days mostly on twitter and Facebook).
Related theories (also laid out originally by Freud) point to the almost universal nature of comedy being attached to anything that humans find too personal, embarrassing, or taboo. We joke about exactly those things – sex, bodily functions, and death – that make us the most uncomfortable. This reveals comedy to be a kind of coping mechanism, if you think about it.
For many theorists, comedy necessarily has an element of cruelty to it. Unfortunately, we laugh at others’ expense. Think about how often this happens. This is why we love TV shows where people trip or get hit in sensitive body parts by blunt objects. This could say a lot about where we come from as a species OR it could also tell us more about the coping mechanism of comedy: life is unfair, we often seem at the mercy of countless forces beyond our control, and ultimately death is coming for us – so, finding comedy in the absurdity of our situation helps us deal with our lack of control. As we say, sometimes all you can do is…laugh
Now, these theories (and I have only scratched the surface of them) help us think about literature and other art forms in an historical context. The ancient Greeks were certainly not the first humans to develop drama as an art form (indeed, it is probably as old as human culture and language are) but they were the first to articulate it and perform in ways that have been preserved for us to look back on today. I have always found it very interesting that the Greeks (and after them the Romans) had essentially two genres of drama: comedy and tragedy. Both, if you think about it, offer a way for humans to respond to the unfairness and twists of fate that life throw at us. The tragic provides a way for us to endure the impending thought of death (more on this with Hamlet) but so does the comic! The comic mode is a kind of carpe diem approach: death is coming, but I will make the most of life while I can. This is why comedy is always associated with the life giving aspects of human existence (which we might call Vitalism): comedy is all about sex, love, marriage, youth, happiness, excess, having fun, defying social roles and responsibilities. The comic figures are always figures of disruption, temptation, and vice; however, they are also beloved figures. We love them, from the “class clown” to the famous stand-up comedian.
Comedy thus comes in many different styles or kinds (we might call them sub genres): These can range from the simplest, “lowest-common-denominator” types of comedy: farce, slapstick, “dirty” jokes, etc. to the higher, more sophisticated forms like satire, intricate word play, obscure references that not everyone gets and so on. Shakespeare, as usual, takes things to a higher level entirely, by building comedies which are blends or combinations of many different styles of both “high” and “low” comedy. So A Midsummer Night’s Dream will have both sophisticated referent humor that requires the audience to understand ancient Greek mythology in order to get a joke; AND it will also have bawdy, sexually explicit jokes that would appeal to the lower sensibilities (although the sex jokes often fly right past modern readers because we don’t know the slang and double entendres being employed.
Historical background: Shakespeare’s comedies developed out of a rich background of dramatic comedy that already existed:
First, there were the Greek and Roman comic models that had been recently rediscovered during the Renaissance. Shakespeare would have drawn on a wide range of translated Greek comedies and he and his colleagues were especially influenced by the Roman comedian, Plautus, who wrote frantically slapstick farces in which various stock figures like the bragging soldier, the “dumb blonde,” the overprotective father, and so on would make the audience laugh. (Incidentally, many of these stock comic characters still exist today! Think about any sitcom on TV and you will find them: the wacky neighbor, the dumb blonde, the foolish father, etc.
Second, there was a medieval theatrical tradition that had, unintentionally, created a comic vein. In the middle ages, there were popular plays called Morality Plays. They were, on the surface, very simple morality stories designed to teach the audience a moral or ethical lesson about being a good person, avoiding sin and temptation, etc. As usual, they backfired! Most of them featured a character called “Vice” (most Morality Plays had characters who lacked personal names [and real personalities], who were stock or type characters…for example, a character might be called “Everyman”). The role of Vice was to tempt Everyman to do something evil. Now, as all actors know, it is always more fun and more rewarding to play an evil part…so very soon, the best actors started to play the Vice characters. They then imbued that character with more personality and more zest than they were meant to have. Very soon, the Vice characters were taking over the plays! They were becoming the stars of the show, so to speak and they thus ushered in the Figure of the Comedian, the Fool, the Clown and all the variations on this character that are familiar to us today, There is a direct line of ancestry from these medieval, anonymous Vice characters to today’s celebrity comedians and comic actors!
Of course, Shakespeare took the stock Vice character and expanded and developed it into a wide ranging array of more psychologically real comic characters (the greatest of whom is Falstaff, who we will meet in Henry IV, Part One).
The Comic genre is more than just jokes, double entendres, puns, hysterical situations, and so on. That is, for Shakespeare, the comic was about more than simply making his audience roar with laughter. The comic was a philosophical approach, a way of viewing life and our stumbling attempts to live it. As a result, we can pinpoint a number of characteristics of Shakespearean comedy (many of which were also common to all Elizabethan comedy):
The Disruption of the Social Order: this is the key starting point for most Shakespearean comedies. They begin with some aspect of the structure of society being “out of whack” (the “time is out of joint” as Hamlet says). As the play progresses the disruption increases, but eventually in the end society is restored to its “proper” order. Today, we still operate with this comic trope or method, which is often called the comedy in which there is “some sort of misunderstanding.” Since many of his comedies are romantic in nature, the disruption very often takes the form of young lovers who must face a variety of obstacles to consummate (both literally and figuratively) their passion for each other. Even Romeo and Juliet operates in this comic mode…the two lovers belong to warring families and therefore cannot be together. Often, the “correct” social roles are overturned in a comedy…the servants outmaneuver the masters, for example.
Related to this is the Fluidity of Identity: Comedies featured a wide range of opportunities for characters to slip into disguise. Masks are very frequently employed. Characters conceal their real identities by changing costumes, by pretending to be of a different social class, and even by switching genders. This was always an ongoing, inside joke for Shakespeare because his female characters were always played by boy actors (given the prohibition of women on Elizabethan stages). In a disrupted social world, one’s identity is also disrupted. The comic mode allows the freedom for characters to act uncharacteristically!
Lovers face Obstacles to Love: This was briefly touched on above, but it actually counts as a separate characteristic since Shakespeare employs it in almost every comedy. Some of it is just proper dramatic planning (that is, you can’t really HAVE a play or a plot at all if the characters get everything they want right away!), but it is also about ratcheting up the comic tension. The lovers are young and by definition they are mad for each other. They can’t wait, in other words, to “be alone together” (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) so, of course, Shakespeare has to keep them apart! Usually an obstructive parent will be one of the obstacles (like Egeus is with Hermia and Lysander in our play). Society’s rigid rules and regulations are also an obstacle. The lovers often face internal questions about their loyalty to each other, the sincerity of their feelings, and so forth.
Comedies are about Sex: At the root, if the comic is about Vitality or Vitalism (the life force), we need to be honest that their subject is sex and sexual attraction. It was (and mostly still is) a mystery to most people. Why are we attracted to some and not others? The myth of Cupid was most often invoked (notice how often Cupid figures in Midsummer) and it is important to remember that Cupid is always both a baby (lacking higher reasoning powers) and blind! The mystery and essentially comic idea of “love at first sight” was something that Shakespeare and his contemporaries were also fascinated with. They also were well aware of the more ironic aspects of all this; that is, how passion and sexual lust, especially once consummated, so quickly turned to indifference and loathing…the comedies also often explore the darker sides of human sexuality as well, often focusing on adultery, infidelity, and so on, especially in the figure of the cuckold (that is, the man who is cheated on by his wife being with another man).
All of Shakespeare comedies End with a marriage, or more often several marriages: this trope has many effects. 1.) it knits up the social disruption that began the play. 2.) it ends the need for any characters to stay in disguise; it is often just before the wedding that all the masks and disguises are removed and all the characters confess and reveal their true identities. 3.) It obviously removes all of the obstacles that the young lovers faced, and 4.) it very obviously consummated the theme of sex! Of course, in the Christian context in which Shakespeare wrote, it also provided the correct societal observation of sex AND implied the duty and purpose of sex in the Christian context, which was procreation of children (“the world must be peopled!” shrugs Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing when he decided to marry Beatrice). For Shakespeare, there is always an underlying irony in the joy and bliss of the wedding(s) at the end of his comedies, for hidden within them is the implication that this is the happiest the characters will ever be. The comedies rarely (and never positively) portray already married couples…meditate on that awhile! In fact, Shakespeare’s most intimate and positive portrait of an already married couple is…Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in Macbeth his bloodiest and most disturbing tragedy!
Shakespeare comedies almost always evoke a separate, sometimes magical realm or place outside of the normal bounds of society, which scholars call The Green World: The Green World takes many forms in his plays. It is always a place where Nature is the operating power rather than human civilization. Very often it is a Forest, an Island, or even just a rural setting outside of the city or the town. In Midsummer it takes on a more mystical, magical form…the enchanted Forest outside of Athens which is the home and kingdom of the Fairies (more on them in the coming weeks as we investigate the play more fully). In other plays, the Green World is not necessarily a magical or supernatural place, but just a place where human society isn’t operating in full force. The Green World is important for the characters to experience, so that they can discover things that they need to know and experience; however, the Green World is almost always perilous and human characters are never meant to stay permanently within it. Thus, in Midsummer the two pairs of lovers (and Bottom) can spend a magical night in the Fairie Forest, but they must return, in the morning, to Athens, to human society and culture.
Shakespeare’s comedies are often focused on the Human unconscious or subconscious and the realm of emotion rather than reason: In Midsummer, of course, this focus takes the form of the emphasis on dreams, which are the language and imagery of the subconscious mind. Love, sex, and romance of course are often assigned to these parts of our lives, as opposed to the cold calculations of reason. The comic usually celebrates the power and joy of emotional life (whereas tragedy will emphasize its dangers: madness, confusion, etc.) The focus on youth in Shakespeare’s comedies help with this too. Being young and in love is its own justification. In a world where death is ever present, if the characters can squeeze a little joy and passion out of existence, it is a very good thing!
Nothing is ever simple in Shakespeare’s world and therefore his comedies always contain, as well, a Dark Thread: this is his tacit reminder that the comic never exists in a vacuum; it is never a pure mode of human experience (conversely, of course, the tragic is not pure either, so we will discover that his tragedies contain many comic elements as well). I already mentioned how the second thoughts about marriage contain this cautionary element that happiness in love may be fleeting, but Shakespeare uses other methods in his comedies to remind as well. For example, he usually leaves one character alone at the end of the play; that is, a character who doesn’t enjoy the benefits of marriage or who is left outside of the restored structure of society.
