We completed reading and studying this Shakespeare comedy during today's session. I discussed how the Elizabethan comedy is marked by a final act symbolizing harmony- generally a marriage or in this play a double marriage . Further, the villain is captured and brought to justice. We noted how in many ways this play mirrors parts of Romeo and Juliet but with a light and happy ending. After we finished the play ,we viewed a few clips of an excellent movie production of the play which helped bring the play to life for Joshua.
We continued our study and reading of Much Ado. We noted the parallel between Beatrice's speech wishing she were a man and Lady Macbeth's similar yearning as she plots the murder of Duncan. Further, we parsed certain dialogue of Dogberry to study the comedic use of malapropisms.
We have enjoyed studying in this early comedy the antecedent plot lines , figurative language and dramatic devices that appear later in Shakespeare's more mature works. Today , we noted that Dogberry's malapropisms manifest in later tragedies , that the metaphor of water cleansing sin appears in Macbeth and Hamlet, and that Beatrice's convincing Benedict to slay his best friend is deeply reminiscent of Lady Macbeth's urging Macbeth to kill Duncan.
We continued to study and read the next act of the play. We noted the importance of certain dramatic techniques such as the "aside" to create comedic situations. We further noted in this early Shakespeare play some of the devices that later plays perfect such as the use of the closing couplet and carrying parallel sentence structure into ongoing dialogue.
We studied the first scenes of Act II during today's session. Again, I noted motifs that Shakespeare later incorporated into his tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. We further discussed how the "disorder" in a comedy is not cosmic but lighthearted as the audience is in on the joke. Last, I noted certain relevant aspects of Elizabethan culture that appear in the play such as the popularity of the masked ball and the almost obsession with adultery in marriage.
I provided instruction on Shakespearean comedy and discussed how the play, Much Ado, in many ways is a forerunner of later tragedies. Specifically , the character Don John is an early incarnation of Iago in Othello and portions of the plot mirror Romeo and Juliet.However, as this play is a comedy, tragedy does not ensue. Instead ,order is restored in marriage. We then read and studied Act I of the play,Much Ado ,noting the witty character traits of the two famous characters, Benedict and Beatrice. I further noted how the play is unusual for Shakespeare as it is almost entirely in prose rather than iambic pentameter.
