Shakespeare’s plays fall into three basic categories: histories, comedies, and tragedies. Broadly speaking, a history play is any drama based on historical materials. In this case, Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar would fit the definition, since they feature historical figures. More specifically, though, a history play is a British play based primarily on Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1578). This account of British history was popular toward the end of the sixteenth century because of the patriotic pride that was produced by the British defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, and it was an important source for a series of plays Shakespeare wrote treating the reigns of British kings from Richard II to Henry VIII. The political subject matter of these plays both entertained audiences and instructed them in virtues and vices involved in England’s past efforts to overcome civil war and disorder. Ambition, deception, and treason were of more than historical interest. Shakespeare’s audiences saw these plays about the fifteenth century as ways of sorting through the meanings of both the calamities of the past and the uncertainties of the present.
Although Shakespeare used Holinshed’s Chronicles as a source, he did not hesitate to make changes for dramatic purposes. In 1 Henry IV, for example, he ages Henry IV to contrast him with the youthful Prince Hal, and he makes Hotspur younger than he actually was to have him serve as a foil to the prince. The serious theme of Hal’s growth into the kind of man who would make an ideal king is counterweighted by Shakespeare’s comic creation of Falstaff, that good-humored “huge hill of flesh” filled with delightful contradictions. Falstaff had historic antecedents, but the true source of his identity is the imagination of Shakespeare, a writer who was, after all, a dramatist first.
Comedy is a strong element in 1 Henry IV, but the play’s overall tone is serious. Falstaff ’s behavior ultimately gives way to the measured march of English history. While Shakespeare encourages us to laugh at some of the participants, we are not invited to laugh at the history of English monarchies. Comedy even appears in Shakespeare’s tragedies, as in Hamlet’s jests with the gravediggers or in Emilia’s biting remarks in Othello. This use of comedy is called comic relief, a humorous scene or incident that alleviates tension in an otherwise serious work. In many instances these moments enhance the thematic significance of the story in addition to providing laughter. When Hamlet jokes with the gravediggers, we laugh, but something hauntingly serious about the humor also intensifies our more serious emotions.
A true comedy, however, lacks a tragedy’s sense that some great disaster will finally descend on the protagonist. There are conflicts and obstacles that must be confronted, but in comedy the characters delight us by overcoming whatever initially thwarts them. We can laugh at their misfortunes because we are confident that everything will turn out fine in the end. Shakespearean comedy tends to follow this general principle; it begins with problems and ends with their resolution.
Shakespeare’s comedies are called romantic comedies because they typically involve lovers whose hearts are set on each other but whose lives are complicated by disapproving parents, deceptions, jealousies, illusions, confused identities, disguises, or other misunderstandings. Conflicts are present, but they are more amusing than threatening. This lightness is apparent in some of the comedies’ titles: the conflict in a play such as A Midsummer Night’s Dream is, in a sense, Much Ado about Nothing — As You Like It in a comedy. Shakespeare orchestrates the problems and confusion that typify the initial plotting of a romantic comedy into harmonious wedding arrangements in the final scenes. In these comedies life is a celebration, a feast that always satisfies, because the generosity of the humor leaves us with a revived appetite for life’s surprising possibilities. Discord and misunderstanding give way to concord and love. Marriage symbolizes a pledge that life itself is renewable, so we are left with a sense of new beginnings.
Although a celebration of life, comedy is also frequently used as a vehicle for criticizing human affairs. Satire casts a critical eye on vices and follies by holding them up to ridicule — usually to point out an absurdity so that it can be avoided or corrected. In Twelfth Night Malvolio is satirized for his priggishness and pomposity. He thinks himself better than almost everyone around him, but Shakespeare reveals him to be comic as well as pathetic. We come to understand what Malvolio will apparently never comprehend: that no one can take him as seriously as he takes himself. Polonius is subjected to a similar kind of scrutiny in Hamlet.
Malvolio’s ambitious efforts to attract Olivia’s affections are rendered absurd by Shakespeare’s use of both high and low comedy. High comedy consists of verbal wit, while low comedy is generally associated with physical action and is less intellectual. Through puns and witty exchanges, Shakespeare’s high comedy displays Malvolio’s inconsistencies of character. His self-importance is deflated by low comedy. We are treated to a farce, a form of humor based on exaggerated, improbable incongruities, when the staid Malvolio is tricked into wearing bizarre clothing and behaving like a fool to win Olivia. Our laughter is Malvolio’s pain, but though he has been “notoriously abus’d” and he vows in the final scene to be “reveng’d on the whole pack” of laughing conspirators who have tricked him, the play ends on a light note. Indeed, it concludes with a song, the last line of which reminds us of the predominant tone of the play as well as the nature of comedy: “And we’ll strive to please you every day.”
Tragedy, in contrast, does not promise peace and contentment. The basic characteristics of tragedy have already been outlined in the context of Greek drama (see Chapter 36). Like Greek tragic heroes, Shakespeare’s protagonists are exceptional human beings whose stature makes their misfortune all the more dramatic. These characters pay a high price for their actions. Oedipus’s search for the killer of Laios, Hamlet’s agonized conviction that “The time is out of joint,” and Othello’s willingness to doubt his wife’s fidelity all lead to irreversible results. Comic plots are largely free of this sense of inevitability. Instead of the festive mood that prevails once the characters in a comedy recognize their true connection to each other, tragedy gives us dark reflections that emanate from suffering. The laughter of comedy is a shared experience, a recognition of human likeness, but suffering estranges tragic heroes from the world around them.
Some of the wrenching differences between comedy and tragedy can be experienced in Othello. Although this play is a tragedy, Shakespeare includes in its plot many of the ingredients associated with comedy. For a time it seems possible that Othello and Desdemona will overcome the complications of a disapproving father, along with the seemingly minor deceptions, awkward misperceptions, and tender illusions that hover around them. But in Othello marriage is not a sign of concord displacing discord; instead, love and marriage mark the beginning of the tragic action.
Another important difference between tragedy and comedy is the way characters are presented. The tragic protagonist is portrayed as a remarkable individual whose unique qualities compel us with their power and complexity. Macbeth is not simply a murderer, nor is Othello merely a jealous husband. But despite their extreme passions, behavior, and even crimes, we identify with tragic heroes in ways that we do not with comic characters. We can laugh at pretentious fools, smug hypocrites, clumsy oafs, and thwarted lovers because we see them from a distance. They are amusing precisely because their problems are not ours; we recognize them as types instead of as ourselves (or so we think). No reader of Twelfth Night worries about Sir Toby Belch’s excessive drinking; he is a cheerful “sot” whose passion for ale is cause for celebration rather than concern. Shakespeare’s comedy is sometimes disturbing — Malvolio’s character certainly is — but it is never devastating. Tragic heroes do confront devastation; they command our respect and compassion because they act in spite of terrifying risks. Their triumph is measured not by the attainment of what they seek but by the wisdom that defeat imposes on them.