Your honour's players, hearing your amendment,
Are come to play a pleasant comedy;
For so your doctors hold it very meet,
Seeing too much sadness hath congeal'd your blood,
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.
Therefore they thought it good you hear a play
And frame your mind to mirth and merriment,
Which bars a thousand harms and lengthens life.
The histories are full of heroic action, political tension, and, yes, the occasional good laugh. But now it’s time to change our direction to a different genre.
As the above quote suggests, framing one’s mind for mirth and merriment bars a thousand harms and lengthens life! I always find it a bit of a tragedy that so little Shakespeare is studied in school, and when it is, it’s only tragedy. I get it: the tragedies are the real meat of Shakespeare’s work, rich and flavorful. But I still think a great entry point for the new reader is the comedies, especially for younger readers. Until you’ve laughed at the pranks of clowns and watched the tangled threads of lovers with great expectations, you’ve missed a helping of mirth and merriment that’s good for what ails you.
Not that all Shakespeare’s comedies are the same by any means. They offer diverse fare themselves. They are sometimes light and cheery, with silly foibles that can be laughed off as we happily watch the problems melt away for the characters. However, Shakespeare is no formula writer, and just as we think we see the pattern of the comedy—misunderstanding that leads to chaos that turns around somewhere in Act III and leads to marriage and cheer in Act V—Shakespeare begins to test the limits of the structures and characters.
Even as the jokes delight us, we find deeper and more complex resonances underneath, and eventually, Shakespeare tests his audiences, too. A moment of slapstick may suddenly ask a very significant question about the nature of marriage. The jibes may turn suddenly sharper than we expected, and we begin to wonder if these conflicts can really be resolved by a cheerful tidying up at the end or if the sugar-coating of comedy can truly cover real pain and scars. Shakespeare’s Comedies are in some ways the road to his Tragedies and Romances, where we see the tougher ideas of pain and struggle and anger and forgiveness more fully explored.
So, enjoy the comedies, but don’t stop thinking and reflecting on the tougher elements—we’ll see Shakespeare continue to add depth and meaning as we move into the later genres. But for now, bring on the laughter!
Aha! Come, some music! Come, the recorders!
For if the King like not the comedy,
Why then, belike he likes it not, perdy.
