Personal Excerpt of A Collective Essay:
A Common Theme of Manipulation Among William Shakespeare’s:
The Taming of the Shrew
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
&
Written by:
Crystal England
on
April 17, 2007
As previously mentioned, the only sort of manipulation actually done by one character to another in The Comedy of Errors can be found in the institution of marriage because its expectations directly affect the characters´ behavior. However, there is a second kind of manipulation that is created by Shakespeare in order to create unreasonable and hilarious circumstances and events.
In the play, The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare manipulates time, space and people in order to create a farcical comedy that leaves the audience laughing and the characters confused. The characters themselves do not manipulate each other because Shakespeare does not write them with profound personalities. That is to say that the characters are not as developed as are those of The Taming of the Shrew and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and such flat characters are unable to have real motivation for manipulation. The one aspect that Shakespeare does add to the characters to make their actions more comical is contrasting personalities. Both sets of twin brothers have contrasting personalities which makes their odd actions even more hilarious when their identities are mistaken ( Tillyard, 62). In addition, the farcical events are unknown to the characters and they are therefore less able to control the outcome of any situation by manipulating another character. The real manipulation is done to the audience because Shakespeare plays on their sense of reason and reactions in order to help them relate to the reality of the story and laugh at the farcical unreality.
The manipulation of reality is the only aspect that all three plays have in common because it causes a confusion that affects the perceptions of those involved. This kind of confusion can be related to The Taming of the Shrew because Petruchio tries to manipulate Kate through convincing her of an untrue reality instead of just telling her that she must do as he says. She is convinced to believe an unreality because of his physical and emotional manipulations to her. He does not let her eat, but does it in a way masked with love and finally, his treatment alters her perception of reality. This is also done in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it is done to Titania by Oberon through magic. His spell causes such confusion that she is not sure if the love she felt for Bottom was a dream or if it really happened.
The timing in comedy is important in order for the audience to get the full effect of humor. Allowing one of the twins to arrive at the same place at the same time while the other twin was expected there causes the confusion that can only be created by timing. For example, the gold chain was given to Antipholus of Syracuse but Antipholus of Ephesus was expected to pay for it. Neither of these characters manipulated each other in order to obtain the gold chain. They were merely victims of Shakespeare’s circumstance and timing. Causing their confusion allows the manipulation of their characters, but does not allow the characters to manipulate one another because the confusion, to this point, remains unknown to them.
Shakespeare’s manipulation of the character’s appearance, that is to say using two sets of twins for a comical effect of confusion relates to the confusion found in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when Puck does Oberon’s bidding and affects the wrong characters causing a sort of mistaken identity. Oberon also manipulates the fog, causing the characters to get lost and this confusion is what finally fixes the farcical events and does not restore the order, but creates a sort of new order.
The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earlier plays and its characters do not reach the profound level of complexity that the characters of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew because the real manipulation is a kind of omniscient power of the reality of all characters in the play. This allows flat characters to still be interesting because it is circumstance alone that is comical.
Works Cited
Shakespeare, William. The Oxford Shakespeare The Comedy of Errors. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
Tillyard, E.M.W. Shakespeare´s Early Comedies. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1965