Tragedy tends to be concerned with revenge, Romance with forgiveness. Plot structure in Romance moves beyond that of tragedy: an event with tragic potential leads not to tragedy but to a providential experience.
The providential "happy ending" of a Romance bears a superficial resemblance to that of a comedy. But while the tone of comedy is genial and exuberant, Romance has a muted tone of happiness -- joy mixed with sorrow.
Like comedies, Romances tend to end with weddings, but the focus is less on the personal happiness of bride and groom the culmination of an individual passion than on the healing of rifts within the total human community.
Thus, whereas comedy focusses on youth, Romance often has middle-aged and older protagonists in pivotal roles. Similarly, while tragedy deals with events leading up to individual deaths, Romance emphasizes the cycle of life and death. While tragedy explores characters in depth emphasis on individual psychology , Romance focuses instead on archetypes , the collective and symbolic patterns of human experience.
Compared to characters in a Shakespearean tragedy or comedy , romance characters may seem shallow or one-dimensional. But Romance characters are not meant to be psychologically credible; their experiences have symbolic significance extending beyond the limits of their own lives and beyond rational comprehension.
In Romance, the emphasis shifts from individual human nature to Nature. Romance is unrealistic. Supernatural elements abound, and characters often seem " larger than life " e.
Prospero or one-dimensional e. Both The Tempest and Cymbeline have a variety of plots and subplots that all seem like they will lead to violence and discord, yet somehow resolve with peace.
SparkTeach Teacher's Handbook. Tragedy Comedy History Romance. Sonnets Narrative Poems. Previous section History Next section Sonnets. Farce is a form of comedy, with little or no purpose other than to prompt laughter from the audience.
Physical humour slapstick and ridiculous situations are trademarks of a farce. Shakespeare did not write any plays that would be classified as a farce, although The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew come close. The Taming of the Shrew has been performed several times as a farce, using the particular form of staging a farce -- commedia dell'arte.
Tragedy, as it relates to Shakespeare's plays, is a drama dealing with a central protagonist, or hero, who has to battle a specific problem or series of problems. Usually the hero overcomes these problems but the outcome is not positive. In almost all Shakespeare's great tragedies, a "tragic flaw" will prevent the hero from emerging completely victorious. The term apocrypha is given to the collection of 12 plays that some scholars believe to be Shakespeare's, but are not officially part of the current canon of works because no real proof of authenticity has ever been brought forth.
Shakespeare's Plays: General Questions I would like to know more about the categories Shakespeare's works fall into and why. The Romances Sometimes Shakespeare's late comedies are grouped together as romances. Have all of Shakespeare's plays been performed? Which plays are considered romances? Did Shakespeare perform in any of his own plays?
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