A Study Of The Comic Techniques In Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost

Compared with Shakespeare’s tragedies and history plays, some critics think that Shakespeare’s comedies are devoid of deep thinking and leave little impression on people. And the researches on Shakespeare’s comedies at home are not sufficient. The researches on Shakespeare’s comedies mainly focus on the famous ones but not on the unpopular ones. One of the early comedies by Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost gets positive as well as negative criticism since its creation. Some critics abroad regard it as a failure and there is little research on this play at home. This present paper, through the analysis of the comic techniques represented in deeds and in words of the characters and the exploration of originality of comic techniques in this play, tries to argue that Love’s Labour’s Lost is a successful comedy viewed from the perspective of comic techniques.This paper follows Michael Mangan’s understanding of the function of a comedy to illustrate the function and characteristics of a comedy and deems that a comedy is supposed to be laughter-generating and mirth-provoking. Adopting the approaches of textual analysis and comparative study, this paper is designed to analyze the comic techniques represented in deeds and words of the characters, and to explore the originality of comic techniques in Love’s Labour’s Lost through the comparison of those in The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew. Comic techniques represented in deeds analyzed in the paper are contradiction, misunderstanding, disguise and dramatic irony. Comic techniques represented in words analyzed are synonym, pun, malapropism and quibble. The comparative part does comparison of the comic techniques with those in The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew with an intention to find out the originality of comic techniques used in Love’s Labour’s Lost. The textual analysis part shows that the comic techniques used in this play can cause the audience to laugh. The comparison part indicates that some comic techniques used in Love’s Labour’s Lost are original compared with the two early comedies and are prone to be mature. The realization of function of comedy through the comic techniques and the originality of comic techniques in Love’s Labour’s Lost both can reflect the successful creation of Love’s Labour’s Lost from the perspective of comic techniques.