Depth Under Mirth: A Study Of Love’s Labour’s Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, And Twelfh Night

Much has been written on William Shakespeare, especially on his tragedies. But notso much on his comedies, which, as a theatrical form for the audience’s happy amusement,are often regarded as of not so much depth as that attributed to his tragedies and romances.However, as any great writer’s works must embody a consistency of thinking,Shakespeare’s comedies, as well as his tragedies, are integrations of great art and deepthought. The depth of thinking noticed in his tragedies, histories, and romances is alsofound in his comedies. This dissertation, with New Criticism’s close reading as its mainapproach while taking advantage of such other approaches as historical-biographicalcriticism, deconstruction and feminism, explores the depth of thought in Shakespeare’scomedies as revealed through the examination of Love’s Labour’s Lost, commonly seen ashis early apprentice work, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a more mature creation from themid phase of his career, and The Twelfth Night, the recognized summit of his comedies.Shakespeare’s time was one of the Great Geographical Discoveries and ofRenaissance. The England he lived in was a complex society in which he witnessed twodistinctly different dynasties and two forces intensely striving against each other, namely,that of the rising bourgeoisie and that of the lingering feudality. All these influencedShakespeare’s observation of and his thinking about his age and social reality, forming theessential condition for the depth of his works. The depth of Shakespeare’s comedies isconveyed through the artistic techniques the playwright employs. The main techniques inthe three comedies examined include coincidences, plays-within-the-play, and languagegames, through which Shakespeare infuses into the works his keen observation of and deepthinking about society, his age and humanity. The presentation of his observation andthinking in these works is then realized through the dramatic characters. The duplecharacters, forming mirror images of each other, make possible the multi-dimensionpresentation of the playwright’s deep thought while the fools and fool-like characters, bycovering up the depth of their creator’s thinking with their mirth, make it even deeper inthe contrastive reflection of the happiness they bring to the audience. In these three playscan be seen the apparent themes of all Shakespeare’s comedies: the praise of genuine love and friendship, the eulogy of the emancipation of humanity, and the longing for aharmonious world. It can also be seen, however, that in these plays are a considerablenumber of dark elements deconstructing these optimistic themes and contributing to thedark themes, revealing the nothingness of the sound and fury of life and love,demonstrating disillusionment, and signifying the unreality of the harmonious world.These dark themes are evidence of the other side of Shakespeare’s deep thinking, whichcontinues into his tragedies, dark comedies and romances.The dissertation, focusing on the examination of Shakespeare’s comedies, takes hisearly and later works as belonging to one consistent system and regards all his plays as awhole continuum, of which his comedies are a part. By examining Shakespeare’sapprentice work side by side with his mature and best works, the study furnishes achronological coordinate, identifying the features of the playwright’s artistic techniquesand thinking which commonly exist in his comedies and continue into his other dramatypes. It also links the complexity of Shakespeare’s comedies to their profundity andsuggests that the latter is the objective of the former. It proposes that the playwright’s deepthinking is the basis and determining factor of the profundity of his comedies and that thecomplex elements in the plays, such as their structures, the relationships of their characters,and the language, are the presentation means of this profundity. Meanwhile, thedissertation proposes the concept of “dark elements” in Shakespeare’s comedies anddisplays that such non-comic elements commonly exist in his works, even in his very firstcomedies.“Dark elements” not only refer to the “tragic elements” and “serious elements”that critics have long noticed, but also to all other elements that do not conform to theending, atmosphere, tone, or ambience of a comedy. The concept is an expansion on suchnotions as “tragic elements” and “serious elements”. Dark elements endow Shakespeare’scomedies with a serious philosophical reflection upon humanity, the meaning of life, andthe ideals and aspirations of mankind, forming an important attribute of their profundity.This dissertation, although not an all-round study of Shakespearean comedies, nor asystematic investigation into all Shakespearean plays, may, by looking at the representativecomic works chosen from the different phases of his creative career, help the understandingof the deep thought consistent in all his works and hence facilitate the interpretation of thisgreat literary figure, who, in Ben Jonson’s words, was the “soul of the age” and “was not of an age, but for all time”.