Humour in Taming of the Shrew
In the Taming of the Shrew Shakespeare creates humour in at least three different ways. First, with the amusing induction which makes the audience laugh and anticipate more comedy. Second, the Taming of the Shrew is a comedy of characters where false realities are everywhere. Finally, it is also a comedy of intrigue, full or irony where characters are placed in amusing situations where things are not always what they seem. The humour in the play is first presented to the audience by the induction in which Sly the drunken tinker is the chief person.The elaborate joke played by the Lord on Sly is very amusing, Bartholomew pretending to be the wife is hilarious. Layers of illusions are added in this induction when players themselves are deceived by the Lord. The audience goes along with this impossible deception of Sly and a humourous ambience is achieved even before Act I has started. The deception and false reality continue right through the play. One can see two aspects of this amusing presentation: The comedy of characters where the behaviour and actions of some characters are truly humourous; sometimes because they are not what they pretend to be but other times because their behaviour or their persona is different f
The play is full of energy and bustling movement. with a broken hilt and chapeless; his horse hipped. and we find the other events involving Kate and Petruchio even more amusing, as we can see that it is nothing more than an elaborate game of chess, instigated by Petruchio. Shakespeare has used the various techniques discussed above (false, realities, irony, deception) to render the play very humourous. It is here that Shakespeare once again creates humour through the concept that 'things are not always as they seem'. However, these false realities are not enough by themselves, as the audience has nothing to go by but what they see before them, and so they are not to know that this is not Petruchio's true personality, and so Shakespeare employs another essential element of humour: he lets the audience know what is truly transpiring, while the characters themselves remain oblivious to the truth. The two characters Katherina and Petruchio are firmly and finely drawn, the scenes in which they appear are infinitely amusing but because we care about these characters the play never descends into farce. Despite all of her outward appearances, she is truly a good person in her heart. and as with the meat some undeserved fault I'll find about the making of the bed.
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