Shakespeare and the Traditions of Comedy

Front Cover
Cambridge University Press, 1974 - Drama - 356 pages
This book relates Shakespeare's comedies to a broad European background. At the beginning and again at the end of his career, Shakespeare was attracted by a tradition of stage romances which can be traced back to Chaucer's time. But the main shaping behind his comedies came from the classical tradition. Mr Salingar therefore examines the underlying theme of 'errors' in Greek and Roman comedies and, taking three Italian comedies famous in the sixteenth century as examples, he then reveals how the Italian Renaissance revived the classical tradition, and what effect this revival had on Shakespeare the Elizabethan playwright and discusses such topics as the device of the play within a play and Shakespeare's choice of Italian short stories as plot material. This book shows how Shakespeare changed the motifs he took over from previous traditions of comedy and highlights the innovations he introduced, as an actor-dramatist writing in the first period of commercial theatre in Europe.

From inside the book

Contents

The unfaithful mirror
1
Comedy as celebration
8
Character and plot
19
Medieval stage romances
28
Early Elizabethan romances
31
Medieval stage heroines
39
Egeon and Apollonius
59
Survivals of medieval staging
67
Fortune as a trickster
157
Shakespeare and Italian comedy
175
Three Italian comedies
191
Double plots in Shakespeare
218
An Elizabethan playwright
243
The player in the play
256
Marriages and magistrates
298
Bibliography
327

ERRORS and deceit in classical comedy
76
The trickster in classical comedy
88
The trickster continued
104
Fortune in classical comedy
129

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information