Comic Transformations in Shakespeare by Nevo Ruth;

Author:Nevo, Ruth;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

The follies of extravagant youth and the errors of older benefactors, together with misfortune at sea and the ill will of a usurer tie a knot of daunting legal intractability. A dazzling remedy is discovered by Lady Bountiful herself, in disguise, thus synthesizing Fortune and Providence and enabling liberated and enlightened lovers to join in holy matrimony. But how liberated? Enlightened in what way? The comic device does not function to expose and exacerbate the follies which are to be exorcized: on the contrary, the comic device exposes the frailties of Arragon and Morocco, but the virtues of Bassanio, thus usurping the function of the remedial recognitions of the resolution and precluding the farcical enactment or working-out of folly which was Shakespeare’s great comic discovery in earlier plays. That Bassanio’s virtue in the caskets scene is precisely risk-taking – gambling – transformed into a Spartan virtue is exactly what would constitute a remedial recognition; while the rings episode is a displaced knot of errors and mistaken identities arriving, like a codicil, after the impossible choices of bond and trial have provided a processus turbarum, and too late to be effective.

Sherman Hawkins, in an admirably thought-provoking article distinguishes between what he calls

the two worlds of Shakespearean comedy. The dramatic expression necessary to subdue or expel the anti-comic spirit seems to proceed on two principles. One is ‘acting out’ its latent impulses … [which] is expansive and cathartic … The second principle is ‘fixing the blame’ … [which] locates the general lunacy or evil in a criminal or scapegoat in whom it can be overpowered and driven out.14

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