That Dweam within a Dweam: Mawwiage in the Shakespeare Comedies
Course Description
Summary
In this exploration of Shakespeare's comedies, we will focus our attentions on the marriage plot, the movement from disorder to order, the means by which the world is set to rights when a man marries a woman, whether or not they love each other or are right for each other, or if perhaps one of them is trapped in a love-potion spell cast on them by Robin Goodfellow, or maybe one of them has the head of an ass and the other one of them is the Queen of the Faeries, or say one pretends most of the show to be a boy when she is not a boy, or one writes horrible love poems to the other and tacks them to every tree in the Arden forest, or if one of them marries the other because it's the only way to remain living in your niece's grand estate, drinking all of her wine, and carousing with your other drunk friends, or because maybe your 'friends' tricked you into getting married, or even after your partner accuses you of being a whore in front of the everyone you know, and you pretend that because of such an accusation you die of shame and then when it's proven you weren't a whore, not even close to being a whore, and maybe everyone should settle down in general about throwing that term around all willy-nilly, you pretend to be your own cousin so you can finally marry the guy who accused you of being a whore in the first place.
Look, y'all, mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement? It's complicated AF, and nonetheless it is (mostly? partly?) what separates the narrative structure of a Shakespearean comedy from a tragedy—in tragedies everyone pretty much dies, in comedies everyone pretty much gets hitched—and with this in mind, we'll tackle the mawwiages and what Shakespeare in particular is trying to demonstrate through his comedies by all the weddings.
Learning Outcomes
- An understanding of the motifs, themes, and tropes set up and used most frequently by Shakespeare in his comedies.
- An understanding of the ways in which Shakespeare manipulated language, used poetic devices, and helped capture new phrases, terms, and words in his plays.
- An understanding of how Shakespeare helped solidify if not develop a now oft-used structure for the genre of comedy writing in plays and screenplays, how his work influenced all that followed.
- A consideration of how Shakespeare’s observations of people, relationships, desires, manipulations might still hold relevance today, with a particular focus on Shakespeare’s comedic heroines and his use of the marriage plot.