- The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Encountering Shakespearean Comedy
- Encountering the Elizabethan Stage
- Encountering the Past I: Shakespeare’s Reception of Classical Comedy
- Encountering the Past II: Shakespearean Comedy, Chaucer, and Medievalism
- Encountering the Present I: Shakespeare’s Early Urban Comedies and the Lure of True Crime and Satire
- Encountering the Present II: Shakespearean Comedy and Elizabethan Drama
- Shakespearean Comedy and Early Modern Religious Culture
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Modern Marketplace: Sympathetic Economies
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Modern Domestic Sphere
- Place and Being in Shakespearean Comedy
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Question of Race
- Farce and Force: Shakespearean Comedy, Militarism, and Violence
- Water Memory and the Art of Preserving: Shakespearean Comedy and Early Modern Cultures of Remembrance
- The Humours in Humour: Shakespeare and Early Modern Psychology
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Senses
- Green Comedy: Shakespeare and Ecology
- The Laws of Comedy: Shakespeare and Early Modern Legal Culture
- Comedy and Eros: Sexualities on Shakespeare’s Stage
- Queer Comedy
- The Music of Shakespearean Comedy
- Gender and Genre: Shakespeare’s Comic Women
- The Architecture of Shakespearean Comedy: Domesticity, Performance, and the Empty Room
- Poor Things, Vile Things: Shakespeare’s Comedy of Kinds
- Stage Props and Shakespeare’s Comedies: Keeping Safe Nerissa’s Ring
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Discourses of Print
- Imagining Shakespeare’s Audience
- Comedy on the Boards: Shakespeare’s Use of Playhouse Space
- Adapting Shakespeare’s Comedies
- Brexit Dreams: Comedy, Nostalgia, and Critique in Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Shakespearean Comedy on Screen
- Holy Adultery: Marriage in The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, and The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Comedies of Tough Love: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado About Nothing
- Comedies of the Green World: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night
- Problem Comedies: Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
The green world is the space where different peoples meet each other: Illyrians and Messenians in Twelfth Night, humans and fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, courtiers and country-dwellers in As You Like It. In essence these plays are all first contact narratives in which each group sheds light on the other. As You Like It offers echoes of the English colonial enterprise and the push to conquer Guiana. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the wood outside Athens proves to be the repository of England’s hidden self, containing its past, both classical and Celtic. Above all Twelfth Night offers images of both a new world and of a new. This essay traces the dynamics of the encounters in each of these three plays, but focusing on Twelfth Night, the comedy in which comedy itself is interrogated as it is forced to confront its own limits and functions.
Keywords: green world, comedy, bear-baiting, first contact narratives, transformation
Lisa Hopkins is Professor of English at Sheffield Hallam University. She is a co-editor of Shakespeare, the journal of the British Shakespeare Association, of the Arden Guides to Early Modern Drama, and of Arden Studies in Early Modern Drama. Her pg xvimost recent publication is From the Romans to the Normans on the English Renaissance Stage (2017).
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- The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy
- Acknowledgements
- List of Figures
- List of Contributors
- Introduction: Encountering Shakespearean Comedy
- Encountering the Elizabethan Stage
- Encountering the Past I: Shakespeare’s Reception of Classical Comedy
- Encountering the Past II: Shakespearean Comedy, Chaucer, and Medievalism
- Encountering the Present I: Shakespeare’s Early Urban Comedies and the Lure of True Crime and Satire
- Encountering the Present II: Shakespearean Comedy and Elizabethan Drama
- Shakespearean Comedy and Early Modern Religious Culture
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Modern Marketplace: Sympathetic Economies
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Early Modern Domestic Sphere
- Place and Being in Shakespearean Comedy
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Question of Race
- Farce and Force: Shakespearean Comedy, Militarism, and Violence
- Water Memory and the Art of Preserving: Shakespearean Comedy and Early Modern Cultures of Remembrance
- The Humours in Humour: Shakespeare and Early Modern Psychology
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Senses
- Green Comedy: Shakespeare and Ecology
- The Laws of Comedy: Shakespeare and Early Modern Legal Culture
- Comedy and Eros: Sexualities on Shakespeare’s Stage
- Queer Comedy
- The Music of Shakespearean Comedy
- Gender and Genre: Shakespeare’s Comic Women
- The Architecture of Shakespearean Comedy: Domesticity, Performance, and the Empty Room
- Poor Things, Vile Things: Shakespeare’s Comedy of Kinds
- Stage Props and Shakespeare’s Comedies: Keeping Safe Nerissa’s Ring
- Shakespearean Comedy and the Discourses of Print
- Imagining Shakespeare’s Audience
- Comedy on the Boards: Shakespeare’s Use of Playhouse Space
- Adapting Shakespeare’s Comedies
- Brexit Dreams: Comedy, Nostalgia, and Critique in Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night’s Dream
- Shakespearean Comedy on Screen
- Holy Adultery: Marriage in The Comedy of Errors, The Merchant of Venice, and The Merry Wives of Windsor
- Comedies of Tough Love: Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love’s Labour’s Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado About Nothing
- Comedies of the Green World: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night
- Problem Comedies: Troilus and Cressida, Measure for Measure, and All’s Well That Ends Well
- Index
