How Does Shakespeare Use Mistaken Identity In Comedic Plays
Comedic Plays of Shakespeare.
By Navrose Kaur
Shakespeare’s comedies are generally identifiable by the use of witty comments, irony, sarcasm and amusing wordplay. They also abound in mistaken identities with very intricate plots that are challenging to follow, with very contrived conclusions.
Mistaken identities: The plot is often driven by mistaken identity. Sometimes this is an intentional part of a villain’s plot, as in Much Ado about Nothing when Don John tricks Claudio into believing that his fiance has been unfaithful through mistaken identity. Characters also play scenes in disguise and it is not uncommon for female characters to disguise themselves as male characters. In “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Antony and Cleopatra” Shakespeare …show more content…
In “As You like It” there is a delicious comedy in Orlando’s enacted wooing of Rosalind, who prompts him in the appearance of a young man to whom he can speak without any shyness. In “Twelfth Night”, Olivia who, mourning her brother’s death, has sworn to be ‘a cloistress’ (a type of nun) and keep herself a veiled hermit for seven years, finds herself love-sick by Cesario, a young man sent with messages from Duke Orsino. Cesario is, of course, the disguised Viola (female protagonist), and the comedy of Olivia’s mistakenly affectionate responses to him/her is all the funnier because it corrects Olivia’s impossible mournfulness. As ever in Shakespeare’s comedies, it takes mistakes to teach characters the truths of their own hearts. Olivia bumps into Viola’s twin brother, Sebastien, and proposes marriage to him. He is hilariously puzzled but obedient; it is as if he knows that he is in a comedy, where accident and error will mysteriously produce happy consequences. The obvious restraint placed upon a playwright of Shakespeare’s day that all women must be played by young male actors becomes a form of artistic freedom, enabling the characters to switch between their gender identities – Masculinity to
By Navrose Kaur
Shakespeare’s comedies are generally identifiable by the use of witty comments, irony, sarcasm and amusing wordplay. They also abound in mistaken identities with very intricate plots that are challenging to follow, with very contrived conclusions.
Mistaken identities: The plot is often driven by mistaken identity. Sometimes this is an intentional part of a villain’s plot, as in Much Ado about Nothing when Don John tricks Claudio into believing that his fiance has been unfaithful through mistaken identity. Characters also play scenes in disguise and it is not uncommon for female characters to disguise themselves as male characters. In “Much Ado About Nothing” and “Antony and Cleopatra” Shakespeare …show more content…
In “As You like It” there is a delicious comedy in Orlando’s enacted wooing of Rosalind, who prompts him in the appearance of a young man to whom he can speak without any shyness. In “Twelfth Night”, Olivia who, mourning her brother’s death, has sworn to be ‘a cloistress’ (a type of nun) and keep herself a veiled hermit for seven years, finds herself love-sick by Cesario, a young man sent with messages from Duke Orsino. Cesario is, of course, the disguised Viola (female protagonist), and the comedy of Olivia’s mistakenly affectionate responses to him/her is all the funnier because it corrects Olivia’s impossible mournfulness. As ever in Shakespeare’s comedies, it takes mistakes to teach characters the truths of their own hearts. Olivia bumps into Viola’s twin brother, Sebastien, and proposes marriage to him. He is hilariously puzzled but obedient; it is as if he knows that he is in a comedy, where accident and error will mysteriously produce happy consequences. The obvious restraint placed upon a playwright of Shakespeare’s day that all women must be played by young male actors becomes a form of artistic freedom, enabling the characters to switch between their gender identities – Masculinity to