Features of a Classic Tragic Comedy: Flashcards
Carnivalesque:
C.L Barber, Mikhail Bakhtin: “Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom.”
Topsy-turvy unruliness of the central section of the plays in the context of periods of festival/carnival in the real world.
Just for a day, rules were suspended and normal hierarchies were inverted.
Clowns and Fools:
The Licensed Fool: given permission to joke about their world; they are professional jesters whose self-conscious humour enables them to poke fun at their society in a satirical way.
The Natural Fool: simple, often lower-class characters who seemingly lack common sense or intelligence. However, they are capable of providing surprising insights and truths. They provoke cruel laughter for their role as scapegoats, or more sympathetic laughter for their sweet innocence/lack of understanding.
Sometimes characters take on both kinds of these ‘fool’ roles.
Comic Structure:
A movement from misfortune, discord and separation towards good fortune, accord, reconciliation and the restoration of order. (Resolution = communal celebration, Climax = disorderly).
The main body of the play might be characterised by disorder, chaos and confusion, the overturning of social conventions and rules, misunderstandings and obstacles that must be overcome.
Some playwrights may challenge, extend or subvert this comic structure.
Green Worlds:
A term introduced by the critic Northrop Frye (1957).
A place where social rules and hierarchies don’t apply and where the problems of the usual world can be worked out.
- Begins in a ‘real-world’ setting
- Moves to a green world such as a wood, forest or other rural location.
- Returns to the real-world setting.
Inversion and Subversion:
Comedy considered to be a low-status genre, due to its key roles:
- To mock those in authority
- To subvert the status quo
- To invert the accepted hierarchies
- To challenge the social and political system
- To transgress what is normally accepted.
Subversion is closely associated with the ideas of festival. Central part of play = challenges to the status quo.
At the end of a comedy, order has been restored and social hierarchies are reinstated. This has led critics to believe that comedy is a conservative genre.
The Lord of Misrule:
Festivals were often overseen by a figure appointed as the Lord of Misrule in the late medieval/early Tudor period.
This figure orchestrated the entertainment and was given permission to rule, to take charge of society for a limited time period.
His period in charge was one of misrule, of subversive freedom and topsy-turviness. (Disruptive).
Mistaken Identities, Cross-dressing and Disguise:
- A catalyst for comic action.
- Can lead to the exploration of wider anxieties surrounding identity, or highlight the slipperiness of sight and perception.
Deliberately set out to disguise their identities, such as when female characters adopt male disguises. These raise questions about the place of women, politics, sexual identity, power, love and status.
Women grasping the opportunity to take control and direct the action of the play is associated with carnivalesque and green worlds.
Theories of Laughter:
Though comic drama isn’t only about what’s funny, theories of laughter can be useful in exploring aspects of it.
- Superiority Theory: the idea that one laughs at something because one feels superior. Also has a social/political dimension as a way of confirming hierarchies in society. Thomas Hobbes.
- Relief Theory: laughing when there is a build up of tension or if we feel awkward. Originates with Freud and his ideas surrounding anxiety. It can also explore social tensions, laughter a release for anger or relief within society.
Incongruity Theory: we laugh at mismatched ideas or elements, the juxtaposition of incompatible things. E.g: the high and the low being brought together.
Stereotypes and Stock Characters:
They are a part of the long tradition of comic drama. Adoring lovers, tricksters, lustful old men, pairs of male slaves, clown figures, etc. Whether what is inherent in the characters is funny or whether our expectations of what is funny have been shaped by the dramas we’ve seen.
Whether we laugh at universal aspects of human nature or because we have cultural and literary expectations about what’s funny.
