A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and RomanceIn A Natural Perspective, distinguished critic Northrop Frye maintains that Shakespeare's comedy is widely misunderstood and underestimated, and that the four romances - Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest - are the inevitable culmination of the poet's career. Rather than comment only on individual plays, Frye treats the comedies as a group unified by recurrent structures, devices, and images: the storm at sea, the identical twins, the heroine disguised as a boy, the retreat into the forest, the heroine with a mysterious father. |
Contents
I Mouldy Tales | 1 |
II Making Nature Afraid | 34 |
III The Triumph of Time | 72 |
IV The Return from the Sea | 118 |
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A Natural Perspective: The Development of Shakespearean Comedy and Romance Northrop Frye No preview available - 1965 |
Common terms and phrases
All's Angelo attitude audience Autolycus begins Bertram called characters chastity Claudio Cloten clown comedy and romance Comedy of Errors comic action contrast convention Court Party criticism Cymbeline death detective stories disguised dramatic dramatist Duke ence experience fairies Falstaff father feel festive conclusion final Frye Frye's Hermione hero heroine human humor identity idiotes illusion imagery Imogen irrational law Jonson kind King Lavache Leontes literary literature Love's Labour's Lost lover magic Malvolio masque Measure for Measure Merchant of Venice Merry Wives Midsummer Night's Dream mood moral myth natural society order of nature Perdita Pericles play plot poet popular Posthumus primitive principle problem comedies Prologue Prospero reality ritual role scene seems sense Shake Shakespeare Shakespearean comedy Shrew Shylock social song speare speare's spectator speech structure symbolized Tempest theme thing Timon tion tragedy Troilus and Cressida turns Twelfth Night Winter's Tale word