The Comedies

Language Comparison:
William Shakespeare seems to use insults to add comedy through out his plays especially, The Taming of the Shrew, A Mid-Summer Nights Dream, and the Tempest. In all three there was harsh insults being thrown back and forth from one person to another. This not only adds something to laugh at but shows the stupidity in many people. Some of the things the characters were fighting about made no sense at all like when Petruchio and Kate were being nasty to each other. That was just one person trying to be crueler then the other person and prove their love. How could insults being said back and forth prove to Kate that Petruchio likes her? In a Mid- Summer Nights Dream when all the characters are in the woods and Bottom is making a fool out of himself, people are saying nasty things to him that he does not even realize. In one case Shakespeare uses insults to try and prove the love between two people and in another to show the stupidity and how naive people can be. In the Tempest when Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo are all fighting on the beach, there are some insults said there too. That is also another scene where the nasty exchanges between characters shows stupidity. They were fighting over ridiculous things and that is shown through insults.

Shakespeare is a very good writer and he knows how to make his plays funny by using simple things such as insults to hold peoples attention.

Commentary:
Through out the three plays: A Mid-Summer Nights Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest; there are similar characters throughout. There are three blocking figures that do things to cause others to be unhappy such as Hermia not being able to marry Lysander and Ferdinand having to follow strict rules to marry Miranda. In the play A Mid-Summer Nights Dream, Egeus, is the blocking figure that will not allow his daughter Hermia to marry her love Lysander. He would much rather her marry Demetrius just because he is of a higher social status then Lysander. In the end of the play its clear that there was no reason for Egeus to keep Hermia from being with Lysander, he was just being difficult and adding conflict to the play.

In the play, The Taming of the Shrew, Baptista, is the blocking figure that does not want any man to marry his daughter Bianca until his other daughter Kate is married. Kate is a shrewd and terrible girl that scares everyone away with her harsh personality and Bianca is the sweet girl that everyone wants to be with. Once again there was no reason for Baptista to come up with this rule but he followed through with it. In the end of the play both daughters end up being married off, Bianca to Lucentio and Petruchio to Kate. There was no reason for Baptista to want his daughters married in this order but both girls found husbands and that's all that mattered in the end.

The Tempest is a play that has a very protective father over his daughter Miranda. Prospero acts as a blocking figure when Ferdinand comes into the picture; a man left shipwrecked on an island due to a great storm. Ferdinand is the first man that Miranda had ever set her eyes on other then her father and Prospero made sure that Ferdinand did all that he said in order to marry his daughter. After Prospero sets the guidelines for Ferdinand, they are completely followed and Ferdinand and Miranda get married. Once again there is a blocking figure in the play, Prospero, that adds some confrontation and obstacles for other characters. There is the same idea of the blocking figure throughout all three plays. These characters may only cause small problems but in the end there is usually happiness and the obstacles have been over come.

Personal Reflection:
William Shakespeare's comedies: A Mid-Summer Nights Dream, The Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest; are three plays that use fools and magic to make the play funny. Shakespeare used certain characters such as Bottom from the play A Mid-Summer Nights Dream to portray the naive people in this world. He was a character that tried to seem intelligent and believed he was the smartest man alive but really he made himself out to be an "ass". The play became so funny with Bottom because of his stupidity and Shakespeare does a good job at using this to entertain the audience. Shakespeare also used the characters Caliban, Stephano, and Trinculo from The Tempest to show fools in society. They made the butler believe he was a powerful man with a servant when really he had no power over anybody. Caliban and Trinculo start to fight and then Ariel comes into the picture and pretends to talk for Trinculo. I really enjoyed how Shakespeare then uses magic to make Ariel invisible to cause the two fools to start fighting.

Magic was another thing I enjoyed in the plays. It made them different then other novels and stories when magical creatures come into the picture and start playing tricks on other people like Puck in a Mid-Summer and Ariel in The Tempest. William Shakespeare's plays uses fools and magic to make them different and some added comedy to please the audience.