shakespear comedy
... love juice is full of funny occurrences. When Lysander wakes up and thinks he is in love with Helena, Hermia is ignored and treated badly by Lysander. Then not only was Lysander saying he loved Helena, Demetrius was also treating Hermia badly. This left poor Hermia so upset but we as the audience know this is a prank and soon the spell will be lifted. The main characters in the play are all developed to a point where the audience can identify with them. We learn things about them individually so we can feel happy or sad when things happen in their life. I felt sad for Hermia when she was jolted by Lysander because their love for each other had seemed so strong and she was so confused by his behavior. Even though the audience knows the truth it is easy to feel sad for her. As the play nears the end, Oberon lifts the spell and everyone seems to believe they have had a rare vision and then their lives go on just as if none of this had happened. The play brings closure to the reader by having the traditional ending of a comedy. They usually end in weddings and a feast which is exactly what happens in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lysander and Hermia, Helena and Demetrius, and Theseus and Hippolyta all get married which signifies a new beginning. The working men end the play with a Bergomask dance and the fairies join in the dance and bless the marriages. A Midsummer Night's Dream contains many elements of a comedy. The most important ones to me are that the play ends happily, it is funny and it made me laugh. Shakespeare wrote Much Ado About Nothing which is also a comedy, but it is a different type of comedy than A Midsummer Night's Dream. Although these two plays share some common elements, they also have differences. Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy of intrigue. It involves suspense, question and has a detective story element. Within the comedy of intrigue, there is social comedy involving Beatrice and Benedick. Through this couple and Claudio and Hero, the play explores the was people interact with each other. Shakespeare shows that love can be very logical but also very passionate. Claudio and Hero have a love that is soft, delicate and logical. Beatrice and Benedick on the other hand, are very passionately in love with each other and show this by quarreling constantly. Claudio's obsession with Hero is from a distance. He worships her and is astonished with her beauty. His love for her is very shallow because he does not know her as a person. Claudio is being logical about marriage by inquiring about Hero's financial state and social standing. After finding out she is an only child, he agrees to let Don Pedro woo Hero in his favor so she would be his wife. When Claudio and Don Pedro put their plan into action at the masked ball, Don John appears. He acts as a blocking figure in this play and causes many problems. He tells Claudio that Don Pedro wants Hero for himself, which is a lie, but Claudio acts like "easy come easy go". He is not very upset that he just lost his soon to be bride. When the truth comes out, the wedding day is set and the planning begins. Don John is once again planning to ruin things. He is a jealous, sour and unhappy person. The greenworld is also used in this play but not for festive activities. It is used for plotting bad things that will hurt people. After Claudio is led to believe Hero was cheating on him, he becomes malicious and wants revenge. Claudio disgraces Hero at the wedding. He refuses to marry her in front of all the guests and accuses her of already having sex with someone else. This serious act of revenge causes the audience to feel sorry for not only Hero, but her family as well because we know that was not her kissing Borachio. The audience may have felt worse for Hero if her character had been more fully developed but she hardly ever spoke even when agreeing to marry Claudio. We can feel sorry for her but not really identify with her because we do not know her very well. Hero is made a spectacle of for no truthful reason and disgraces her family. After Hero faints at the wedding, Beatrice is furious. She wants revenge against Claudio. Finally she and Benedick declare their love for each other which was made possible by being under tension and emotional stress and she was finally able to let down her guard. She feels out of control because she needs a man to kill Claudio. She is usually able to take care of things herself but not this time. Thankfully Benedick will not kill Claudio and the truth comes out because of Dogberry and Verges. When the night watchmen overhear Borachio talking about the scheme Dogberry and Verges bring him and his comrade to their superior. It is funny this watchmen could catch anyone doing anything wrong. The watchmen are like Bottom and are comical. They have the same problem as Bottom and have great difficulty communicating. After the truth is out that Claudio was fooled into thinking that Hero was cheating on him, he is full of grief because he believes Hero is dead. He agrees to marry Leonato's niece, who is supposed to look just like Hero, to make up his terrible mistake to he family. After he marries the masked bride, he is happy to see it is Hero. This certainly is a marriage of convenience. He did not know Hero anyway so it would not have mattered if he knew the bride to be. In a sense, Hero was resurrected from the dead and Claudio ends up being a very lucky guy. Most of the characters are fully developed, except Hero, so we can identify with their grief and then their joy. As the play comes to an end everything is wrapped in a neat package. Don John is captured and brought back to be punished, Claudio and Hero, and Beatrice and Benedick are married and the dance and the feast begin. Measure for Measure is a play that is very different from A Midsummer Night's Dream. The comedy in this play is very raw. The atmosphere of the two plays are different but they both deal with the same issue of sexuality. After the Duke has left the city in Angelo's hands, he wants to show his power by condemning Claudio to death because he got Juliet pregnant. Angelo is not being reasonable because he has let the power go to his head. Angelo has also had sex out of wedlock, he just did not get Mariana pregnant. In this play sex is portrayed as much more dangerous than it has been in the other...