THE STRUCTURAL PATTERN OF SHAKESPEAREAN COMEDY
             William Shakespeare was one of the most famous playwrights in the history of theater. Ironically, in his day, his work was not considered literature, but entertainment.
             Many of the plays he wrote were comedies. The main purpose of the comedy is to arouse laughter at human behavior. Laughter was necessary for Elizabethan society, as everyday life was very harsh. Shakespeare knew this and tried to offer some sort of comedic work that the masses could enjoy. Comedy was a reflection of social life in Shakespeare's eyes. He tried to create work that followed that principle. All his work had one underlying theme, which also reflected society as a whole. That theme was disorder. His plays were dedicated to the restoration of order in society. In his comedies, the normality of a community would be disrupted by some unexpected event. The breakdown of the order in the community would result in confusion and conflict. This conflict could sometimes be the source of humor in the play. In essence, the structural pattern of Shakespearean comedy is a journey, which begins with a conflict in the plot and ends with the resolution of that conflict. The structure of the comedy is divided into two main parts: the introduction of conflict and its resolution. This becomes apparent through examples from one of Shakespeare's plays, A Midsummer Night's Dream. That is how Shakespeare, a literary architect, constructed his comedies.
             The first structural piece in a Shakespearean comedy would be the debut of a problem in the plot. This may be a catastrophic dilemma in the story or simply a dispute between characters. Whatever the case, Shakespeare always establishes the problem near the first act of the play. The remainder of the plot would serve to fix the problem. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, two lovers, Lysander and Hermia, are forbidden to marry. Hermia's father, Egeus is against...