Thursday, May 12, 2011

Explain how As You Like It is a comedy.

"As You Like It" has many shared elements with some of Shakespeare's more famous comedies:  the idea of the forest as a magic or transformative space away from restrictive and tyrannical society ("A Midsummer night's dream"); the theme of unrequited love and gender switching from ("Twelfth night"); and the exiled Duke and his playful daughter from ("The Tempest").

The mood is light, and it is easy to read, even though it may not be as compelling a read as the aforementioned comedies.

My college professor always asked this question when we were trying to categorized the plays:  Did anyone die?  If the answer is "no," then it is most likely a comedy.  The tragedies and most of the histories record deaths within the text.  The comedies never do...not even "The Taming of the Shrew".

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