[Music]
hey there I'm Mike Rugnetta this is
crash course theatre and I hope you're
wearing your stockings cross-gartered
because today is all about forests twins
bed tricks cross-dressing and a
wrestling match that's right
Shakespearean comedies because when
Shakespeare wasn't killing off all of
his characters he wrote some pretty
sparkling humor comedy is maybe the most
complicated of all the Shakespearean
genres because along with a Midsummer
Night's Dream and as you like it it also
includes works now referred to as
problem plays and romances today we'll
look at what constitutes a comedy
Shakespeare's kick-ass heroines and the
unfunny kinds of comedies with a closer
exploration of Cymbeline no foolin well
some fool
[Music]
a Shakespearean comedy is a play that's
not based on a recent historical figure
and that ends happily now happy is a
relative term even for Shakespeare but
it's a safe bet that if the floor isn't
littered with dead bodies it's probably
a comedy and if it ends with a marriage
it's definitely a comedy there's more
variety in this genre than Shakespeare's
others comedy spans everything from the
comedy of errors a straight-up loudest
ripoff and a knock about farce to the
bittersweet melancholy of the Winter's
Tale uncomfortable but nonetheless funny
ish plays like measure for measure and
the Merchant of Venice sit somewhere in
between comedies like midsummer and
Twelfth Night usually revolve around
themes of separation and reunion of guys
and disguise and mistaken identity
there's often a retreat away from civil
society into a forest a place where some
social niceties fall away and more
authentic behavior emerges there are
usually songs though often they're
weirdly sad like come away come away
death and in sad Cypress let me be laid
low or not well Shakespeare often works
with stock characters who you'll
remember from Roman comedy and its
inheritors the disapproving dad the
headstrong lover the wily servant but
part of the genius of Shakespeare is
that these characters don't feel like
stock characters they feel like real
people with real fears and real desires
in a lot of the place by Shakespeare's
contemporaries we laugh at the
characters but in Shakespeare we laugh
with them they demand our sympathy in
Twelfth Night we laugh at the arrogant
servant Malvolio but when we see
Malvolio is hurt
suddenly we don't feel so great about
giggling shakespeare's comedy always
comes with a hefty dose of empathy and
if the tragedies are about men and yes
Cleopatra I am generalizing the comedies
are very much about women sometimes
they're about women trying to protect
themselves sometimes they're about women
trying to marry the men of their choice
usually they're about both and in most
of these plays the women have to step
away from their ordinary lives in
to succeed they're gonna run away into
the forest they're gonna put on pants if
their Rosalind and Imogen they're gonna
run into the forest in pants which is
just sensible really it's how people
should be running into the forest if you
ask me
unlike the heroines of tragedies who are
trapped in terrible circumstances the
heroines of comedy find ways to escape
those circumstances I'm not trying to
victim blame but if Desdemona or Juliet
or philia happened upon a forest and
some pants maybe things could have been
different perhaps this is a commentary
on how limited the opportunities for
most women were and how few choices they
had when they're at home wearing a
corset but it's also important to
recognize that if Shakespeare's heroines
defy social norms it's only for a bit
none of them wears pants forever their
defiance is limited and always
correctable nothing they do is ever that
unladylike and at the end of the play
men order them to leave the forest and
put their dresses back on so that they
can get hitched plus remember that all
those spunky heroines were played by boy
actors during Shakespeare's time so the
cross-dressing is really double
cross-dressing boys dressed as girls
dressed as boys it is Hecate Mehta
Shakespeare also emphasizes how great
and swoony love marriages are at a time
when marriage was typically an economic
undertaking and not only are these love
marriages they're also marriages of
equals or almost equals the women are
almost always a little braver more
clever and more sensible than the dudes
as per use for our final thoughts about
shakespeare's women let's turn to Sir
Walter Raleigh courtier spy Explorer and
all-around Elizabethan badass who made
his own love marriage and went to the
tower for it
Sir Walter wrote of Shakespeare's ladies
they are almost all practical impatient
of mere words clear-sighted as to ends
and means they do not accept the
premises to deny the conclusion or
decorate the inevitable with imaginative
Lending's but ok the consolation prize
for the dudes in the comedies men tell
most of the jokes how funny are the
jokes it really varies some of the
funniest Joker's are in the tragedies
like Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet or the
gravediggers in Hamlet or Hamlet himself
when he's dragging Polonia
and some of the jokes in the comedies
are kind of sad like The Fool festes
bittersweet cracks in Twelfth Night
while some of Shakespeare's jokes are
sophisticated the most memorable ones
are not Macbeth basically invents the
knock-knock joke all of the plays
contain puns some of which are great and
some of which are tragic like the way
Dogberry mixes up suspect and respect
and bottom says odious when he means
odorous why are you laughing Yorick well
it tickled my funny bone tragic and you
know what L shaped Speier loved dirty
jokes comedy of errors has a fart joke
and many of his plays are lousy with
bits about naughty bits and Shakespeare
pretty much invents the your mom joke
when a round son says to Aaron the more
thou hast undone our mother and Aaron
says villain I have done my mother dang
insert super hot fire here but just
because a play has jokes doesn't make it
a comedy that your mom joke is from
Titus Andronicus which is not a
knee-slapper
and the flip is also true just because a
play is a comedy doesn't mean it's full
of jokes Shakespeare's comedies also
include plays we now call the problem
plays and the romances there isn't
universal agreement on which plays
belong in which category but let's start
with problem play a term invented in the
late 19th century and inspired by the
works of Heinrich Epson problem plays
take on a social problem and are sort of
stuck between comedy and tragedy plays
like measure for measure all's well that
ends well and the Merchant of Venice our
problem plays they have happy endings at
least on paper and often end with a
marriage just like a classic comedy but
the resolutions aren't satisfying and
the conclusions can feel sour like how
measure for measure ends with a marriage
proposal that goes unanswered the
romances also mix tragedy and comedy but
the melding of genres is softer the
approach to time and space is looser the
plays usually begin as tragedies along
the lines of a fellow or King Lear but
they don't end that way in tragedies
people act hastily thoughtlessly
selfishly in the romances people
exercise patience and forgiveness so the
conclusions are happier in The Winter's
Tale and The Tempest what's
last returns what's broken is mended
mostly in the problem plays the happy
endings feel wrong in the romances they
feel right the endings are unlikely sure
but they're also deeply satisfying
characters have changed and matured in a
way that they just aren't able to in the
tragedies but there's a greater sense of
weight and of disaster narrowly averted
than in the comedies to explore the
romances let's look at one of the wilder
ones
Cymbeline first produced in 1611
Cymbeline concludes with one of the
all-time great recognition scenes
help us out thought bubble Cymbeline is
king of ancient britain his two sons
were stolen a long time ago and his only
daughter Imogen has just eloped with
posthumous which is not good because
posthumous is of a lower social status
also he's named posthumous posthumous is
banished to Italy and the Queen a plus
to have Imogen married to her blockhead
son Clanton she also tries to murder
Imogen just to cover all the baddy bases
while posthumous is in Italy he meets
this guy Giacomo and he makes a bet that
yokomo can't seduce image in which is
not what you do if you love and trust
your wife Giacomo fails but he hides out
in her room and does enough spying and
stealing to make it seem like he
succeeds posthumous again not the
greatest now plans to kill Imogen but a
servant warns Imogen and because she's
brave and awesome she escapes dressed as
a boy named fiddly Clayton finds out
where Imogen is going he figures he'll
head there rape Imogen and then marry
her because cotton is even worse than
posthumous somehow Clanton puts on
posthumous his clothes and heads off but
then gets his head off literally by a
mountain man that he insults and this is
where it starts to get complicated turns
out that the mountain man Polydor is
actually imagens long-lost brother
Darius he and Cod wall actually a Vegas
and also another long-lost brother have
already by chance taken in a disguised
Imogen who has accidentally taken a
sleeping potion
Imogen wakes up sees what looks like a
dead posthumous and flips out
she done somehow joins the invading
Roman army as a pageboy
why not meanwhile the Roman hordes have
invaded and Cymbeline is about to
execute posthumous and Fedeli but then
posthumous reveals himself an image and
reveals herself and the kidnapper
reveals himself and the long-lost Sons
discover their real parentage and
Cymbeline agrees to pay tribute to Rome
also
the queen is dead the end thank you
thought bubble okay so that recognition
scene is a little extra but in Cymbeline
you can see how beautifully Shakespeare
combines tragedy and comedy we have the
jealousy plot borrowed from Othello the
cross-dressing borrowed from the
comedies and enough time and care to
make sure that everything works out all
right in the end even for the Romans and
we have a woman who is way more
ingenious than her husband girl you
could do a lot better at least get you a
man who looks at you the way Paris looks
at Juliet when he doesn't think Romeo is
looking at him it's time to say goodbye
to Shakespeare and continue on to Jacobi
and drama and Caroline Court masks by
way of farewell I'm gonna leave you with
Ben Johnson's words on Shakespeare I
loved the man he was honest and of an
open and free nature had an excellent
fancy brave notions and gentle
expressions wherein he flowed with that
facility that sometimes it was necessary
he should be stopped but there was ever
more in him to be praised than to be
pardoned so pardon gentles all and until
next time
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