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Literary Criticism Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths

by (author) Camille Wells Slights

Publisher
University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Initial publish date
Dec 1993
Category
Shakespeare, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Drama, Shakespeare
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802029249
    Publish Date
    May 1993
    List Price
    $76.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781442615045
    Publish Date
    Dec 1993
    List Price
    $26.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442679894
    Publish Date
    May 1993
    List Price
    $77.00

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Description

Challenging the traditional view that Shakespeare’s early comedies are about the experience of romantic love and constitute a genre called romantic comedy, Camille Wells Slights demonstrates that they dramatize individual action in the context of social dynamics, reflecting and commenting on the culture in which they originated. Shakespeare’s Comic Commonwealths sheds new light on ten Shakespearean comedies: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labor’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. In a diversity of comic forms – from rollicking farce to tragicomedy – these plays offer varying perspectives on the forces that make and mar human communities.

Dramatizing tensions between savagery and civilization, autonomy and dependence, and isolation and community, Shakespeare’s comedies both reflect and comment on the society that produces them. Slights eschews viewing these comedies as endorsements of the prevailing ideologies of sixteenth-century England or as subversions of that hierarchical, patriarchal culture. They can be most fruitfully understood as imaginative forms that present cultural practices, institutions and beliefs as human constructions susceptible to critical scrutiny. While exposing the injustice and brutality as well as the assurances and satisfactions of social experiences, Shakespeare’s comedies represent people as inescapably social beings.

By combining historical scholarship with formal analysis and incorporating insights from social anthropology and feminist theory, Shakespeare’s Comic Commonwealths offers new readings of Shakespeare’s early comedies and analyses the interaction between the plays and the social structures and processes of early modern England.

About the author

Camille Wells Slights is Associate Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan.

Camille Wells Slights' profile page