English Literature KS3 / GCSE: Shakespeare's comedy

Narrator:
Comedy is found throughout Shakespeare’s plays – even in the darkest of tragedies.

Many comic characters are quick thinking, intelligent and witty, like Beatrice from Much Ado about Nothing, while others are downright fools – think Stephano in the Tempest.

But comedy has a huge range of uses – and here are just some of them…

Narrator:
In Romeo and Juliet, comic innuendo brings light relief to a play full of defiance and despair. Mercutio is a quick-witted bloke, with a great line in banter and puns, allowing him to nip between the two warring houses. When Juliet’s Nurse visits Romeo, Mercutio mocks her cheekily, saying that if she was a whore she’d be a mouldy one, way past her sell by date.

Mercutio:
‘No hare, sir; unless a hare, sir, in a Lenten pie,That is something stale and hoar ere it be spent.’

Narrator:
He uses a lot of sexual innuendo, winding up enemies and friends but when he turns it on Romeo – mocking his love struck state – it makes the whole situation more believable, more human and a bit less tragic… (briefly).

Mercutio:
‘Why, is not this better now than groaning for love?

Narrator:In Much Ado about Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick wage a long war of comedy and wit, in their combative love. They dig at each other constantly, but their banter drives the relationship and the plot.

Even their moaning about each other is funny. To get away from her, and her gibes, Benedick asks to be sent on very long, obscure and impossible errands.

Benedick:
‘Will your grace command me to any service to the
World’s end? I will go on the slightest errand now
To the Antipodes that you can devise to send me
On; I will fetch you a tooth-picker now from the
Furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of
Prester John’s foot, fetch you a hair off the great
Cham’s beard, do you any embassage to the Pigmies,
Rather than hold three words conference with this harpy.’

Narrator:
They insist loudly that they hate the idea of love and marriage, and use animal metaphors and puns to deliver yet more gibes…

Benedick:
‘Well you are a rare parrot-teacher.

Beatrice:
‘A bird of my tongue is better than a beast
Of yours.

Narrator: But the final joke is on them – despite all their moaning and denial they realise they do love each other and their friends give them a hard, humorous time about the change of heart…

They have one last line of great banter …

Benedick:
‘Come, I will have thee; but, by thisLight, I take thee for pity.

Beatrice:
‘I would not deny you but by this good day,
I yield under great persuasion; and partly to
Save your life, for I was told you were in a consumption.’

Narrator: In the Tempest the sub-plot involves funny drunken antics. Trinculo and Stephano are shipwrecked servants, but fuelled by wine, and their combined fears of terrifying creatures on the island, they turn into clown-like characters.

To escape the storm, Trincula and Caliban, a local man, hide under a cloak and, stumbling across them, a very drunk Stephano thinks he’s found a monster…

Stephano:
‘This is some monster of the isle with four legs, who
hath got, as I take it, an ague.’

Narrator:
The scene has physical slapstick comedy. as well as verbal humour. Stephano discovering his friend under the cloak and they decide to set up as Gods of the island, with Caliban as their devoted follower.

Caliban: ‘And I will kiss thy foot: I prithee, be my god.

Narrator:
So, Shakespeare isn’t afraid to use comedy in any of his plays and employs it in many different ways. Mercutio’s innuendo in Romeo and Juliet brings light relief and humanity to immense tragedy. The comic combative love of Beatrice and Benedick drives their relationship and the plot of Much Ado about Nothing, and the drunken slapsticks clowns in the Tempest, make us laugh at them and ourselves.