Why are his comedies not funny at all?
I thought Comedy of Errors was pretty funny and Love's Labour's Lost was delightful, like a proto-Carroll. But then again I didn't really enjoy the Taming of the Shrew.
>>25186124How do I understand a Shakespearean comedy. Am I retarded? I've read like 10 comedies of him and don't remember shit about any of them. The only comedy I remember is The Merchant of Venice, and that didn't even feel like a comedy
>>25186113In Shakespeare's day a comedy was simply a play with a happy ending. It wasn't necessarily supposed to be funny. That said, a lot of his comedies do contain some jokes, but you need fairly high reading comprehension to appreciate an Elizabethan joke in the 21st century.
>filtered by ShakespeareStick to your own retarded language.
Macbeth is somehow the funniest play of his with the dinner party scene as he tries to play host and the “It was a rough night” understatement
>>25186139Well, Comedy of Errors is just a good ol' situational comedy. Mistaken comedies, slapstick, nothing really special here. Maybe watch a play.LLL is all about puns and wordplay. Read Alice in Wonderland and try to tune yourself in to this kind of humour. Take this fragment:Why, all delights are vain; but that most vainWhich, with pain purchas'd, doth inherit pain,As painfully to pore upon a bookTo seek the light of truth; while truth the whileDoth falsely blind the eyesight of his look.Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile;So, ere you find where light in darkness lies,Your light grows dark by losing of your eyes.Study me how to please the eye indeed,By fixing it upon a fairer eye;Who dazzling so, that eye shall be his heed,And give him light that it was blinded by.Study is like the heaven's glorious sun,That will not be deep-search'd with saucy looks;Small have continual plodders ever won,Save base authority from others' books.These earthly godfathers of heaven's lightsThat give a name to every fixed starHave no more profit of their shining nightsThan those that walk and wot not what they are.Too much to know is to know nought but fame;And every godfather can give a name.It has seemingly endless repetitions of the same word in different context. The light of the mind, by seeking the light of knowledge and reading all day, ruins his eyes (light) and consequently eyesight (light).Same with eye: instead of losing your eyesight, you'd do better by pleasing your eyes by being dazzled by a beautiful woman's eyes (fairer eye).
12th Night had it’s moments Much Ado About Nothing had a pretty funny based retard
>>25186113Because it was to entertain the queen and her bootlickers
>>25186124>But then again I didn't really enjoy the Taming of the Shrew.Try the version where every character is a clown.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMdXHoZD6Ag
>>25186113Because Comedy is topical, tragedy is fucking forever."A 1600 BC gag about a pharaoh, said to be King Snofru, comes second -- "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish."https://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyle/worlds-oldest-joke-traced-back-to-1900-bc-idUSKUA147851/
>>25186139Some kind of reading guide or annotations to point out all the sex jokes
>>25186113I found King Lear quite hilarious.
>>25186113i bet if you showed some guy from the 1600s seinfeld he wouldn't find it funny
>>25186113His comedies are hilarious. Genuinely the funniest literature in English. The lover's quarrels in Midsummer Night's Dream, Sir Toby Belch's drunk antics in Twelfth Night, the battle of wits in Much Ado About Nothing, Orlando's pubescent love in As You Like It and of course we can't forget about the divine satyr himself, Sir John Falstaff.
>>25186124Unironically watch Joss Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing
>>25186172>tomorrow.. and tomorrow... and tomorrow...>*studio laugh track*
>>25186739I don't think this is a good approach if you want to laugh at the jokes. I think there should be some guide to identifying for yourself when a sex joke is being made. Then maybe the jokes will remain funny since they're not being explained to you.
>>25186124Dude what. The bantz in Taming are fucking hilarious, and the language of his low-class characters is basically modern.
To appreciate the Bard fully, you need to be able to understand his high-level wordplay.
>>25187566And to understand his wordplay you need to be able to learn the accent of his time.
i see what OP means despite the shit everyone is giving him. the comedies tend to be backgrounded by melancholy, the tragedies, by humor. "excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps." but they are both, always and at all times, full of jokes. which is what i love most about shakespeare. a writer who does not joke, is not a writer, but an autolibrarian
>>25187642yup, it's a common fact that using a modern pronunciation will have the jokes fly over your head
>>25186113Comedy = story with a happy ending.the modern understanding of comedy is relatively new.Also one time in grade school a local theatre group performed The Taming of the Shrew and it was fucking hilarious. Watching it is way different from reading it.
>>25186139>How do I understand a Shakespearean comedy.you watch the play
>>25186156>In Shakespeare's day a comedy was simply a play with a happy ending.What the hell are you talking about?
>>25187711>Comedy = story with a happy ending.What the hell are you talking about?
>>25187809>>25187818lmao
>>25187809>>25187818Can you not read English? That sentence means exactly what it says.
>>25187903That sentence is full of shit
>>25187809>>25187818>Unlike tragedy, which focuses on the downfall of noble figures, Classical comedy was defined as a performance that ends happily and features "lower-type" characters (ordinary citizens, slaves) rather than kings or heroes.
>>25187933just because you don't know something doesn't mean it's wrong, dickhead
>>25187933are you a high school dropout, or were you just in the retard class? because this is basic trivia you should have been taught.
>>25187934>AI kill yourself>>25187936shut the fuck up>>25187943>this is basic triviathis is basic bullshitThere is no contemporary evidence that Shakespeare or his peers thought of "comedy" as just any play with a "happy ending". You're just repeating bullshit you were taught by retarded high school teachers.
>>25187970I'm not arguing with someone who's retarded and proud of it. I do not care if you go about the rest of your life with the wrong opinion about this and I will not reply to you again.
>>25187984>has no arguments>has no evidence>"I'm not arguing with someone who's retarded"Kek, you're so full of shit
>>25187970you are factually wrong.
>>25188138show me the facts or shut the fuck up
>>25187933>I have 47 chromosomes and none of them work
The Merry Wives of Windsor strikes me as Shakespeares funniest non-pastoral comedy because of how much he clearly hates Falstaff and wants to humiliate the shit out of him. Bloom crying about it is always good for a laugh too.
