Course work theme: Humor and satire in Shakespeare’s comedies. Done by: Abdurakhimova Nilufar Research adviser: Gaziyeva Saida Chirchik 2022 Content introduction chapter I. Shakespeare’s life and works

The boundaries of comedy
Comedy was traditionally a ‘lower’ genre than tragedy or history, and so these comedies by Shakespeare’s contemporaries justified themselves by their satirical ambitions. Satire was a higher genre than other kinds of comedy, commended by classical authors as morally improving. City comedies had a moral purpose: they mocked current follies and vices. Shakespeare was little interested in topical satire. Yet there is some evidence that the rules and conventions governing comedy were loose in Shakespeare’s day. The title pages of the various quarto editions of Shakespeare’s plays indicate that generic categories were not hard and fast. The quarto edition of Love’s Labour’s Lost (1598) announces it as ‘A Pleasant Conceited Comedy’ and the quarto Taming of the Shrew declares it to be a ‘wittie and pleasant comedies’. Yet the title page of The Merchant of Venice (1600) calls it ‘The most excellent History of the Merchant of Venice’. These title pages – almost certainly composed by booksellers rather than the playwright – tell us about the appeal of word play and contests of wit to Shakespeare’s first audiences. To us The Taming of the Shrew might seem a play about sexual politics, but it was probably initially admired for being ‘wittie’: that is, for featuring two leading characters who were skilled in verbal antagonism. Verbal humor, often dependent on puns and allusions, is sometimes difficult to translate on the modern stage, but it was essential to Elizabethan and Jacobean expectations of comedy. One of Shakespeare’s most popular comic characters, Sir John Falstaff, arrived on the stage in history plays but was celebrated for his verbal dexterity. As he announces, ‘I am not only witty in myself, but the cause that wit is in other men’ (Henry IV, Part 2, 1.2.9–10). The quarto edition of Henry IV, Part 1 (1598) was advertised as including ‘the humorous conceits of Sir John Falstaff’. Subsequently, the title page of the quarto edition of The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) described it as ‘A most pleasant and excellent Conceited comedies, of Sir John Falstaff, and the Merrie Wives of Windsor’.⁴