themostlamentablecomedyofromeoandjuliet.docVIP

The Most “Lamentable Comedy” of Romeo and Juliet: Shakespeare’s Ironic Vision Chung-hsuan Tung Abstract Shakespeare is an impure dramatist who writes both comedies and tragedies and mixes comic and tragic elements in the same play. At about the same time when he composed the comedy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with a tragic play-within-the-play performed farcically (i.e., the Peter Quince play of Pyramus and Thisbe), he wrote the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, which echoes the theme and tone of the comedy in such a way that we can regard it as the Dream’s “play-without-the-play.” Romeo and Juliet has been very popular on the stage and on the screen. But it is often criticized as a bad tragedy for its abuse of chance in plot and of rhetoric in language. In order to judge the play well, we need to understand that the play is in fact a “comitragedy.” Hence, it is natural for Shakespeare to use coincidences and play with words in it. Actually, like Mercutio in the play and Peter Quince in the Dream, Shakespeare has a comic vision to make light of serious matters. The comic vision is also an ironic vision. It enables the playwright and his characters to see the necessary co-existence of mutually opposing things. Consequently, they have to accept the fact that hate co-exists with love; death co-exists with sex, etc. This ironic vision is best expressed in the wordplay of uttering oxymora and puns. Even the hero’s name contains such wordplay. If we want to consider the play in terms of “comic relief,” we have to adopt an expressive theory of vision. Only by considering the play in the light of the playwright’s comic or ironic vision can we then fully appreciate it. Key Words and Phrases: 1. Impure dramatist 2. Play-within-the-play 3. Play-without-the-play 4. Tragicomedy 5. Comitragedy 6. Sonnet 7. Oxymoron 8. Pun 9. Ironic vision 10. Comic relief I. An Impure Dramatist Playwrights can be called “pure” or “impure” dramati