An Approach to Shakespearian Comedy

Summary

Anything like a serious probing into the nature of Shakespearian Comedy, an attempt to discover, as it were, its governing principle, has been rare. One may hold the view that such an effort is hardly necessary, that, as has been suggested in the case of Tragedy, each Comedy could best be studied for its peculiar kind of unity of theme, structure, and effect, rather than as illustrative of the Shakespearian comic idea.

Shakespeare, at any rate, seems to write his Comedy with little concern for conformity to the established genre. The tradition associated with the form gave but a general direction to his attitudes. 'What distinguishes Shakespeare's Comedies from most contemporary ones is the amount of blending. Each play is sharply individualized, and yet nearly every one contains in different proportion all the elements of the others.'1 The peculiar blend of several modes has produced a kind of 'polyphonic music', to use Miss Bradbrook's phrase, asking of the reader a continual switching of interest and also a capacity to respond with a kind of multi-consciousness to the situation.