William Shakespeare

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The Comedy of Errors

Shakespeare based the plot of The Comedy of Errors, a farce performed in 1594, on classical comedies by Plautus. It was published for the first time in the First Folio of 1623. The play, Shakespeare’s shortest, depends for its appeal on the mistaken identities of two sets of twins both separated in their youth. The comedy ends happily with the reunion of both sets of twins, after a bewildering series of confusions. Shakespeare makes his play more complex than Plautus’s by the addition of the second set of twins, twin servants to the twin brothers of the main action, and the play displays the young Shakespeare’s formal mastery of the comic form and anticipates themes and techniques of his later plays.

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The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which appears as the second comedy in the First Folio, was probably first performed about 1594. Shakespeare’s first attempt at romantic comedy, it concerns two friends, Proteus and Valentine, and two women, Julia and Sylvia. The play traces the relations of the four, until the two sets of lovers are happily paired off: Proteus with Julia, and Valentine with Sylvia. Much of the humor in the play comes from a clownish servant, Launce, and his dog, Crab, described as “the sourest-natured dog that lives.” Shakespeare probably wrote the part of Launce for comic actor Will Kemp.

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The Taming of the Shrew

The Taming of the Shrew (1593?) was first published in the First Folio in 1623. This comedy contrasts the prim and conventional Bianca, who grows willful and disobedient over the course of the play, with the shrewish Katherine, who is finally tamed by Petruchio, her suitor and, finally, husband. Yet Katherine and Petruchio are clearly well matched in style and temperament, and Katherine’s speech at the end on the importance of obedience may be delivered with an obvious sense of how far this is from what she believes or even from what Petruchio really wants. Kiss Me Kate (1948), a musical based on The Taming of the Shrew, proved popular on stage, as did a motion-picture version of Shakespeare’s play in 1967 with actors Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. However, unless the action is played with its possible ironies clearly apparent, audiences today will likely find the play’s ostensible values difficult to take, especially the belief in the need to tame a wife.

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Love’s Labour’s Lost

Love’s Labour’s Lost was first published in 1598 and was the first published play to have “By W. Shakespeare” on its title page. The play’s slight action serves as a peg on which to hang a glittering robe of wit and poetry. It satirizes the loves of its main male characters as well as their fashionable devotion to studious pursuits. The noblemen in the play have sought to avoid romantic and worldly entanglements by devoting themselves in their studies, and they voice their pretensions in an artificially ornate style, until love forces them to recognize their own self-deceptions. The play’s title anticipates its unconventional ending: The women refuse to marry at the end, demanding a waiting period of 12 months for the men to demonstrate their reformation. “Our wooing does not end like an old play,” says Berowne; “Jack hath not Jill.”

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Middle Comedies

Although very different in tone, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Merchant of Venice from the mid-1590s provide evidence of Shakespeare’s growing mastery of the comic form and his willingness to explore and test its dramatic possibilities. A Midsummer Night’s Dream represents Shakespeare’s first outstanding success in the field of romantic comedy. The Merchant of Venice is in its main plot another example of a romantic comedy, but the presence of Shylock disrupts the comic action, haunting the place even after he has disappeared from it.

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