Acting Funny: Comic Theory and Practice in Shakespeare's PlaysFrances N. Teague This anthology of critical essays uses Shakespeare's plays to consider some of the theoretical and practical issues involved in staging the comic. |
Contents
| 9 | |
Othello and New Comedy | 29 |
Alls Well That Ends Well as Noncomic Comedy | 40 |
The Tempest Comedy and the Space of the Other | 52 |
Audience Preparation and the Comedies of Shakespeare | 72 |
Historicizing Comic Theory and Practice in A Midsummer Nights Dream | 85 |
Comic Ethnic Slander in the Gallia Wars | 109 |
Ethos and Epideictic in Cymbeline | 123 |
Shakespeares Cosmic Comic Representation | 142 |
An Indian Perspective | 153 |
Shakespeare in the Classic Detective Story | 164 |
Bibliography | 180 |
Notes on the Contributors | 189 |
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Common terms and phrases
action actor All's Antony argue artisans assumptions audience becomes Benedick Bertram Bharata Bharata Muni Bottom Caliban Cambridge character classic detective stories Cleopatra clown comic sentiment court create critics culture Cymbeline Cymbeline's death delight Desdemona discussion dramatic edition effect Elizabethan Ends English epideictic essay ethnic Falstaff female fiction figure genre Gosson Hamlet Helena Henry Henry IV plays hero hierarchy Iachimo's Iago Imogen's Jonson Kate King laughter Leonati literary literature London Love's Labor's Lost lower-class Macbeth male marriage Mehinaku Merry Wives Midsummer Night's Dream miles gloriosus Miranda moral murder Othello Oxford Plautus play's plot poetry political Portia Posthumus Posthumus's praise Prospero Pyramus and Thisbe Renaissance representation rhetoric role Roman scene sexual Shake Shakespeare Shakespeare's Comedies Shakespeare's plays Sidney Sidney's social speare stage structure Sycorax Tempest theater theatrical theory Theseus thou tion tragedy tragic Welsh witch Wives of Windsor woman words writes York
Popular passages
Page 62 - When thou cam'st first, Thou strok'st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in't; and teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night; and then I loved thee And showed thee all the qualities o
Page 161 - To what base uses we may return, Horatio! Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till 'a find it stopping a bunghole? Alexander died, Alexander was buried, Alexander returneth to dust, the dust is earth, of earth we make loam, and why of that loam whereto he was converted might they not stop a beerbarrel?
Page 60 - true: When we were boys, Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dewlapped like bulls, whose throats had hanging at 'em Wallets of flesh? Or that there were such men Whose heads stood in their breasts? which now we find Each putter-out of five for one will bring us Good warrant of. (3.3.43-49)
Page 68 - voices: That, if 1 then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming The clouds methought would open and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked, I cried to dream again.
Page 69 - I pitied thee, Took pains to make thee speak, taught thee each hour One thing or other: when thou didst not, savage, Know thine own meaning, but wouldst gabble like a thing most brutish, I endowed thy purposes With words that made them known.
Page 56 - O, a cherubim Thou wast that did preserve me! Thou didst smile, Infused with a fortitude from heaven, When I have decked the sea with drops full salt, Under my burden groaned: which raised in me An undergoing stomach, to bear up Against what should ensue. (1.2.152-58)
Page 76 - well prepared for. Shakespeare mentions him first in 1.2, when Portia responds to news of his impending arrival with a racial remark: "if he have the condition of a saint, and the complexion of a devil, I had rather he should shrive me than wive me
Page 79 - ornament" from the beginning, Bassanio moves inexorably to choose the leaden casket and, by his choice, to release in Portia the joy that is the consequence of his right determination: 0 love, be moderate, allay thy ecstasy, In measure rain thy joy, scant this excess! 1 feel too much thy blessing; make it less, For fear I surfeit. (3.2.111-14)
Page 119 - appointed justices of the peace, to call poor men before them about matters they were not able to answer. Moreover, thou hast put them in prison, and because they could not read, thou hast hang'd them, when, indeed, only for that cause they have been most worthy to live.
Page 126 - is a creature such As, to seek through the regions of the earth For one his like, there would be something failing In him that should compare. I do not think So fair an outward and such stuff within Endows a man but he. (1.1.19-24)