HUMOR EN LAS OBRAS DE SHAKESPEARE, Ejercicios de Teatro

¡Descarga HUMOR EN LAS OBRAS DE SHAKESPEARE y más Ejercicios en PDF de Teatro solo en Docsity! Shakespeare’s Humor, Irony, and Language Play by Don L. F. Nilsen and Alleen Pace Nilsen 1 Humor in Shakespeare’s Comedies As an example of a Shakespearean comedy consider A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It is a “comedy of humors” with many eccentric characters, but the magic in the play makes the characters even funnier. Bottom, for example, ends up with the head of an ass. His name is Bottom, and in English, one’s “bottom” is one’s “ass.” 2 Humor in Shakespeare’s Tragedies The humor in Shakespeare’s tragedies is more important than is that in his comedies. When the tragedy becomes unbearable, Shakespears inserts humor not only for comic relief, but also to contrast with the stark tragedy that came before and will surely follow afterward. Here are some examples: The drunken porter scene in Macbeth The fool-is-smarter-than-the-king dialogue in King Lear The Polonius in the wings speech in Hamlet And the grave digger’s scene in Hamlet: “Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horation; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy…. Where be your gibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning.” 5 Comedy of Errors (1592) Alleen and I will discuss the humor, irony, and language play of Shakespearean plays going from 1592 to 1606. In the process, we will contrast the humor of Shakespearean comedies with that in his tragedies, and we’ll also contrast the humor of Shakespeare’s male characters vs. that of his female characters. Comedy of Errors (1592) is a knockabout farce, but a knockabout farce with a difference, because the characters in the play and the issues being presented are serious ones —love, fidelity, and personal honor (Bryant 25). 6 The Taming of the Shrew (1593) The bawdiness of Petruchio’s and Katherine’s punning is illustrated in the following dialogue: PETRUCHIO: …come sit on me. KATHERINE: Asses are made to bear, and so are you. PETRUCHIO: Women are made to bear, and so are you. KATHERINE: No such jade as you, if me you mean. 7 Contrast Petruchio’s speech above with Katherine’s speech at the end of The Taming of the Shrew. Kate shows a last bit of defiance by saying that the sun is not the moon although Petruchio claims it to be. But she relents and through ironic exaggeration knows it is the moon (Evans 121, Bamber 35). KATHERINE: Forward, I pray, since we have come so far, And be it moon, or sun, or what you please; An’ if you please to call it a rush candle, Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me. PETRUCHIO: I say it is the moon. KATHERINE: I know it is the moon. 10 Thus Kate is tamed and Petruchio wins his wager; but Kate nevertheless retains her independence. By the end of the play, Katherine is more dominant than ever because she has learned how to phrase her attacks so irresistibly— “by humbly recognizing her own limitations and disarming resistance” (Richmond 91). Kate uses her wit and intelligence and her undefiled spirit to show her equality to men, and teach the other women the rules by which to govern their marriages if they are to be independent as well (Madden 7-8). By the way, Petruchio’s name comes from the Greek word petros meaning “stone or rock,” thus demonstrating Petruchio’s strong, consistent, and willful nature. At the end of the play, Petruchio “proves” that he has tamed Katherine by saying “Why there’s a wench! Come on, and kiss me, Kate.” (Levith 70) Thus providing the name for the musical comedy which is to follow. 11 Romeo and Juliet (1595) Romeo and Juliet has an ironically humorous death scene that not only advances the plot. It changes the genre of the play from a Romantic Comedy to a Tragedy. Mercurtio (a mercurial figure) has been portrayed in this play as a likeable and easy-going fellow, but in Act III, Scene i, Mercutio, who has been mortally wounded, reacts in his usual humorous fashion: MERCUTIO: “No, ‘tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church- door, but ‘tis enough; ‘twill serve. Ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I am pepper’d, I warrant, for this world.” (Evans 99) 12 In Act III, Scene I, Puck decides to have a bit of fun with Bottom. Puck replaces Bottom’s head with the head of an ass, and because the “Love in Idleness” potion has already been placed in the eyes of Titania, the queen of the fairies, she immediately falls in love with Bottom, bearing an ass’s head, as soon as she sees him. This example of someone named Bottom becoming an Ass is one example of the sexual punning that Shakespeare does in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. 15 Another example is “Snug the Joiner, since a joiner is a person who fits things together as people do in sex. ‘Flute’ and ‘Snout’ are English slang words for penis. ‘Quince’ is a play on the word ‘quointes,” which was the Middle English spelling for ‘cunt.’ Quince is a carpenter, and works with ‘wood,’ which rhymes with ‘wode’ (madness), and which is also slang for a penis An erection in England is often called a ‘woody.’” (Brewer 148). 16 The Merchant of Venice (1596) In The Merchant of Venice Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, is forbidden by her father to marry a gentile, so she elopes with a Christian and steals her father’s money. Shylock’s reaction to this is comical—he doesn’t know which he values more, his money or his daughter. “My daughter! O my Ducats!—O my Daughter! Fled with a Christian!—O my Christian ducats!” (Act II, Scene viii). 17 Much Ado about Nothing (1598) It should be noted (pun intended) that the title of Much Ado about Nothing contains a pun. In Elizabethan English, “nothing” was pronounced very much like “noting.” This play in fact dramatizes the much ado which the characters make in their interpretation and understanding of the world, and each other. “The sophisticated gentlemen of Much Ado about Nothing tend to take noting in the sense of interpreting, resulting in a comedy of misunderstandings” (Tuverson 1-2). 20 Much Ado about Nothing has three plots, and it is basically humor that holds these three plots together in a single play. The main plot is about Claudio and Hero, and the two subplots feature the witty arguments of Beatrice and Benedick on the one hand, and the comic fumbling of Dogberry and his friends on the other hand. The wit that is shown by Beatrice and Benedick in arguing their cases ranges from puns to conceptual wit, in which the characters use “allusive understatement and sophisticated logic” (McCollom 73). When Dogberry gets excited his words get especially confused, “Marry, sir, they have committed false report; moreover they have spoken untruths; secondarily,they are slanders; sixth and lastly, they have belied a lady; thirdly, they have verified unjust things; and to conclude, they are lying knaves” (Evans 358). 21 In Much Ado about Nothing, Beatrice and Benedick don’t so much disdain each other as they enjoy the enactment of disdain. Benedick shows his affection for Beatrice in an ironic way at the ball, when Beatrice has insulted him and he then asks Don Pedro for any excuse to leave the party. The fact is that he could have left at any time on his own accord, but he says, “Will your Grace command me 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 toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia, bring you the length of Prester John’s foot, fetch you a hair off the great Champs berare, do you an embassage to the Pygmies, rather than hold three words’ conference with this harpy” (Act II, Scene i). 22 As You Like It (1599) Carrie Morene says that much of the humor, satire and irony of As You Like It resides in the words and actions of Rosalind, Jaques, and Touchstone. “Rosalind and Touchstone are whimsical yea-saying skeptics who affirm the values they seem to mock” (Ornstein 141). Rosalind adopts the role of a saucy lacky, and in this guise she assures Orlando that he can’t be Rosalind’s true lover because he lacks the marks of a lover: “a lean cheek…a blue eye and sunken…an unquestionable spirit…a bear neglected hose ungarttered…bonnet unbanded…sleeve unbuttoned…shoe untied…and everything about [him] demonstrating a careless desolution.” At the end of this speech Rosalind (as Ganymede) says that Orlando’s being well-groomed is suggestive of his “loving himself [more] than seeming the lover of any other.” 25 In As You Like It, Touchstone has the role of a Court Jester, but he also contributes to the action of the play. One of his monologues is very similar to Cyrano de Bergerac’s monologue about his nose, as he attempts to “quarrel by the book.” He describes the different degrees of argument as the “Retort Courteous,” the “Quip modest,” the “Reply Churlish,” the “Reproof Valient,” and so on. (Evans 399). 26 When Touchstone hears the romantic love poems which Orlando has written for Rosalind, Touchstone taunts Rosalind by creating some parody verse of his own: “Sweetest not hath sourest rind, / Such a nut is Rosalind” (Evans 109-110). One of the most often quoted lines in all of Shakespeare appears in Act II of As You Like It: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts.” 27 Feste, the fool in Twelfth Night is a character reminiscent of the character of Vice in the Tudor morality plays. Vice was a crude character who taunted the Devil with a wooden dagger and rode off the stage on the Devil’s back (Hotson 84). Fest leaves the stage in the same way: “I am gone, sir, / And anon, sir, / I’ll be with you again, / In a trice, / Like to the old vice, / Your need to sustain; / Who, with dagger of lath, / In his rage and his wrath, / Cries, ah, ha! To the devil: / Like a mad lad, / Pare thy nails, dad; / Adieu, goodman devil” (Evans 132). 30 Hamlet (1600) There is much irony in Hamlet. The most famous pun in Hamlet occurs after Hamlet decides to obey the ghost. Horatio’s question, “To what issue will this come?” is a play on that which issues from an arse, i.e. a fart, and Marcellus answers that “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.” Claudius, of course, is the state of Denmark, and it is Claudius which is rotten (Rubinstein 186). 31 When Horatio mentions that the funeral of Hamlet’s father and the marriage of Hamlet’s mother come very close together, Hamlet ironically replies, “ ‘Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral bak’d meats / Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.’” Hamlet gives this ridiculous explanation of his mother’s hasty wedding ironically, in order to intensify his revulsion at the lust which he and Horatio both recognize as the real explanation (Booth, 177). 32 King Lear (1605) Northrup Frye says that in King Lear, Shakespeare is ironically parodying a tragic situation. Many of Shakespeare’s play contain a fool, a clown, a jester, or a madman, but the “fool” in King Lear is not so much of a “fool” as the king is. In fact, at one point in the play, the fool says, “Nuncle! Would I had two coxcombs and two daughers?” Lear asks, “Why, my boy?” and the fool responds, “If I gave them all my living, I’ll keep the coxcombs myself. There’s mine; beg another of thy daughters” (Muir 39). The fool is here saying that he would give something to his daughters if he had daughters, but he would still keep the cap so that he could make a living. He is further telling Lear that he has given everything to his daughters, and this means that he must now beg his daughters for a living (Lin 8). When the King says, “Dost thou call me a fool, boy?” the fool replies, “All the other titles thou has given away; that thou was’t born with” (Evans 441). 35 Macbeth (1606) There is very dark humor and irony in Macbeth when Lady Macbeth taunts her husband by equating his desires to kill the king with his sexual promises. “She links his twin deeds of assassination and lovemaking” (Homan 940). The play Macbeth also contains the famous “drunken porter scene of Act 2, Scene iii. This scene comes between the murder of King Duncan and the discovery of his body, and is therefore the most tense moment of the play. The audience is in an extreme state of arousal, as the drunken porter, before answering the loud knocking at the castle gate, decides to play the role of the gate keeper in Hell. In his fantasy, he opens the gates of Hell to admit a failed farmer, an equivocator, and an English tailor, before he, in reality, actually opens the castle gate and admits the messenger. 36 The drunken porter scene is comic relief, and occurs at a time in the play when the audience needs comic relief. But the comic relief of the drunker porter scene also adds to the tragedy of the play in two ways: First, it allows the audience to take a breath and prepare themselves for more tragedy. And second, it provides a comic foil against which the tragedy becomes even more tragic (Derks 52). 37 Frye says that in comedy there tends to be a “tricky slave” (dolosus servus”) that is an “eiron” figure who acts from a pure love of mischief, and is able to set the comic action going (212). Some of these “tricky slaves” or “vices” can be as light- hearted as Puck in A Midsumer Night’s Dream, or as malevolent as Don John in Much Ado about Nothing (Frye 137). Shakespeare’s comedies also have a buffoon character, which Frye describes as an “entertainer.” He is jovial and loquacious and both Falstaff and Sir Toby Belch are examples (Frye 175). 40 Conclusion # 2: Women in Shakespeare’s Comedies Carol Neely suggests that in Shakespeare’s comedies there are four women whose skills at logic, wit, and language play make them as strong as the strongest of Shakespeare’s men. These women are Katharine in The Taming of the Shrew, Portia in The Merchant of Venice, Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, and Rosalind in As You Like It. Katharine ends up subjecting herself to marriage, but is able to keep her independence in the end. Portia, the most intellectual of the women, takes on the disguise of a male lawyer in order to prove her superior intellect to the men of Venice. 41 Beatrice uses her charming intellect to match wits with Benedick, thus proving her equality. And Rosalind disguises herself as a man, in which guise she befriends her own lover and takes control of all the events around her, making sure that everything comes to a happy conclusion. These plays all begin in a man’s world, but the women come in and take over, and by their intelligence and wit, they “transform the men from foolish lovers into—we hope—sensible husbands” (Neely 215). In her Shakespearean Comedy, Chintamani Desai notes that whenever Shakespeare has a battle of wits between a man and a woman the woman is bound to win. Much of Shakespearean Comedy is the result of the clash between the male and female intelligences. They hinge on the conflict between their wits. “And in this conflict, man is the loser. For wit is woman’s special quality as well as weapon” (Desai 45). 42