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Shakespearean comedy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

William Shakespeare's comedic plays
The Duel Scene from 'Twelfth Night' by William Shakespeare, William Powell Frith (1842)

In the First Folio, the plays of William Shakespeare were grouped into three categories: comedies, histories, and tragedies;[1] and modern scholars recognise a fourth category, romance, to describe the specific types of comedy that appear in Shakespeare's later works.[2]

Plays

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This alphabetical list includes:

  • everything listed as a comedy in the First Folio of 1623;
  • one play (Cymbeline) widely regarded as a comedy but listed among the tragedies in the First Folio; and
  • the two quarto comedies (The Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, Prince of Tyre) which are not included in the Folio but generally recognised to be Shakespeare's own.

Plays marked with an asterisk (*) are now commonly referred to as the romances. Plays marked with two asterisks (**) are sometimes referred to as the problem plays.

References

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  1. ^ Wells 2011, p. 105.
  2. ^ O'Connell 2006, p. 215.

Bibliography

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