OF SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY M.H. Abrams defined ‘comedy’ as ‘ a work in which materials are selected and managed primarily in order to interest‚ involve‚ and amuse us: the characters and their discomfitures engage our delighted attention rather than our profound concern. We feel confident that no great disaster will occur‚ and usually the action turns out happily for the chief characters. Abrams specifies several different types of comedy ‘within the broad spectrum of dramatic comedy’‚ including romantic
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Critical Analysis of Scorsese’s "The King of Comedy" To be king for a day is the central theme in "The King of Comedy" by Martin Scorsese‚ a black comedy that features Robert De Niro as Rupert Pupkin‚ an eccentric wannabe stand-up comic hell bent on achieving stardom. Pupkin idolizes talk show host Jerry Langford (played by Jerry Lewis) the proclaimed "King of Late Night." Pupkin’s goal in life is to replace Langford becoming "The King of Comedy" hence the title. He believes himself to be a
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The comedy of Manners emerged during the age of Dryden‚ the age of Restoration. Therefore it is also called Restoration Comedy. “The Restoration comedy of manners reached its fullest expression in The Way of the World (1700) by William Congreve‚ which is dominated by a brilliantly witty couple.” This sort of comedy is called comedy of manners for the writers in the restoration theatre have shown the ‘manners’ and ‘morals’ of the ways of life of the higher class aristocratic fashionable society‚ however
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Aristotle said that comedy is ‘’an imitation of inferior people’’. How far do you think that this applies to the character of Rita in the play ‘Educating Rita’? Educating Rita is a play that uses the colloquialism of the main protagonist‚ Rita‚ to create the comedy element for the audience when she is being tutored by Frank‚ an untypical university lecturer who works in the setting of 1980’s northern England. In interpreting the characteristics of Rita‚ it can be identified that comedy is indeed an imitation
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The Comedy of Manners had its origin in Ben Jonson’s Comedy of Humours. Jonson was the follower of the classical ideal of comedy using laughter as a corrective. His characters had a dominant humour of their own and were mostly named after it. This comedy represented not the qualities of an age but of humanity. The Restoration dramatists revived this comedy‚ representing the qualities of their immediate field. It differed from the earlier species in its lighter treatment of various issues
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The Divine Comedy‚ written by Dante Alighieri‚ analyzes life after death in aspects that many beings do not consciously admire. Dante takes the reader along on an adventure through Hell‚ Purgatory‚ and Paradise. Though Dante is the author‚ he is also the main character of this journey through the afterlife. Dante uses both first person point of view and impeccable imagery in his developing of the themes of The Divine Comedy. There are three main themes throughout the poem: the perfection of God
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LYSISTRATA‚ a comedy of stereotypes The playwright Aristophanes wrote about an ancient Greece‚ Athens in particular‚ during a time of constant warfare. His play "Lysistrata" is an attempt to amuse while putting across an anti-war message. In fact even the naming of the play is an anti-war message of sorts. The word "lysistrata" means‚ "disband the army" (Jacobus 162). Aristophanes was a crafty writer; he creates a work of art that causes his audience to think about the current state of affairs
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out loud comedy. In his play The Importance of Being Earnest‚ Oscar Wilde uses dramatic irony to create humor by creating problems for characters to solve‚ promoting reactions from characters‚ and tying these problem and reactions into the resolution. In The Importance of Being Earnest the audience is aware of future conflicts and secrets between the characters before the characters themselves are. One main secret‚ that Jack is pretending to be his nonexistent bother Earnest‚ drives the
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to have again what he once cast off” (102-103). The seventh layer of hell: where the suicides’ go to forever take on the body of a tree‚ and to have life begin to grow only to be eaten by Harpies. Dante Alighieri‚ author of the poem‚ “The Divine Comedy” derives the meaning behind the “forest of suicides” and the “bush-souls” from the influence the Catholic Church played in Florence around the 1300’s. The “forest of suicides can be explained through the Last Judgment‚ and how the sinners punishment
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Dante Alighieri’s “The Divine Comedy” is a poem written in first person that tells of Dante’s altered-ego pilgrimage through the three realms of death‚ Hell‚ Purgatory‚ and Paradise while trying to reach spiritual maturity and an understanding of God’s love while attaining salvation. Dante creates an imaginative correspondence between a soul’s sin on Earth and the punishment one receives in Hell. "In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself in a dark wood where the straightway
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