Genres

Content Group

Overview

An important precedent for Renaissance thinking about dramatic genres was Aristotle’s Poetics, whose theories about the absolute distinction between pure comedy and consistent tragedy were affirmed by such writers as Sir Philip Sidney in his Apology for Poetry, in which broad theatrical applications were also laid down for the Unities of Time, Place and Action. These assertions evolved into the strict rules of Neoclassicism, limiting plots to one day, one location, and a single unified action. However, this pattern did not rigorously apply to Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre practices. In the first collection of Shakespeare’s scripts, the First Folio, his plays were broken into three not two categories: Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies. These three genres provide only a rough sorting of plays mostly not rigorously conforming to Aristotle or the Unities (except perhaps for The Comedy of Errors, and The Tempest). The comedies are plays with mostly humorous episodes and contrived plots leading to largely happy endings. Histories explicitly deal with recognized historical figures from British or European history, but their tone varies considerably, from the consistently fatal seriousness of Henry VI, Richard II, King John, and Henry VIII, to the hyperbolic overtones of Richard III, which involves melodramatic improvisations such as Richard’s seduction of Lady Anne, and his pervasive black humor. Such excursions into comedy reach an extreme in the roles of Falstaff and Pistol in the two parts of Henry IV and Henry V. Moreover, Shakespeare’s frequent use of Roman history, largely derived from Plutarch, led to plays normally categorized as tragedies, such as Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, which conclude with drastic fatalities for many of their characters. In the First Folio these plays were grouped as tragedies with scripts dealing with prehistoric, or Dark Age figures usually presented in unhistorical terms, such as King Lear and Hamlet, which may involve humor but have broadly fatal conclusions. The almost equally legendary tragedy of Macbeth verges on supernatural fantasy. Othello is unusual in Shakespeare for handling misfortunes in a roughly contemporary European setting, though preserving much cynical humor in the vein of Richard III, found in its villain, Iago. Despite its classical Greek setting, Timon of Athens also marks another eccentric form of tragedy, colored by severe social satire, while Titus Andronicus, though theoretically set in late Imperial Roman plays is more an exercise in horror/fantasy. These two plays are frequently attributed in part to others authors: George Peele for Titus and Thomas Middleton for Timon. Troilus and Cressida, while placing the death of Hector at its climax, has proved even more categorically elusive, from mixing tragic tones with the obscene humor of Pandarus and the scurrilous abuse of Thersites. Indeed, most of Shakespeare’s latest plays, Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, which are classed as comedies in the First Folio, have escaped from that category in modern criticism, because their thrillingly episodic plots stress neither comic figures nor tragic conclusions. Since the vagaries of their plots correspond to those of classical narratives such as Apollonius of Tyre, or comparable medieval romances such as Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, these late plays have usually been grouped under the title of “romances” in recent collected editions. However, research has unearthed Renaissance dramatists’ awareness of an equally apt category for these plays, coined by Plautus in a preface defending his Aphitryon, of “tragicomedy,” a form favored by John Fletcher, Shakespeare’s successor as dramatist for the King’s Men, in the preface to The Faithful Shepherd. That script is a version of an Italian illustration of this genre, Il Pastor Fido of Guarini. Guarini praised the genre of tragicomedy as more true to life by mixing episodes of intense feeling with an equal emphasis on humorous material, usually ending happily. This mixed genre has been increasingly applied not only to Shakespeare’s late plays but to ones, earlier considered comedies, such as The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure, but which modern tastes find tainted with darker issues such as anti-semitism and sexual decadence. Such plays, dealing with social problems, have also been described as “Problem Plays” (following the precedent of Ibsen). In general, Shakespeare’s aesthetic eclecticism makes rigid formulas such as “genre” unhelpful.

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Genres

Content Group

Please offer comments and suggestions on any aspects the site to: Director Hugh Richmond at richmondh77@gmail.com. See samples at the site Blog.

Comedies

Histories

Tragedies

Romances

Renaissance

Modern Period

Context

Format

Diversity

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Content Group

Please offer comments and suggestions on any aspects the site to: Director Hugh Richmond at richmondh77@gmail.com. See samples at the site Blog.

Comedies

Histories

Tragedies

Romances

Renaissance

Modern Period

Context

Format

Diversity