Shakespearean comedy and Rio
The term "comedy" has a variety of meanings. In everyday use, it is a form of entertainment filled with jokes, satire, and storytelling, intended by the author to be funny – to make the audience laugh. In elementary school classes, if a student is the "class comedian", he is always goofing around, trying to get others to laugh at him. There are different kinds of comedy: stand-up comedy, situational comedy (often abbreviated to "sitcom"), surreal comedy, romantic comedy, tragicomedy. In this post I would like to discuss the genre "comedy" in the context of the works of William Shakespeare and identify one modern film franchise which contain themes that resemble those of Shakespearean comedy.
First, a little background. William Shakespeare is one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. His birthdate is not documented, but we know he was baptized on April 26, 1564, and died on April 23, 1616. (2016 contained the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.) His hometown was Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, where he returned after retiring to live out his days. His work includes plays, sonnets, and narrative poems, and entire fields of English scholarship continue to be devoted to him. While I was a dual-enrolled high school senior taking courses at The Ohio State University, I elected to take ENGLISH 2220: Introduction to Shakespeare as my first semester class, which was the fourth and final English credit I needed to graduate high school. During my first semester as a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, I took a comparative literature course called COMLIT 20: Episodes in Literary Culture: Shakespeare and the World. This course satisfied one of the seven-course breadth requirements for UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Science. Much of the content in this post was informed by the knowledge I gained through studying Shakespeare at both Ohio State and Berkeley.
A Shakespearean comedy follows several conventions of comedy that were prevalent in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries (some people like to call it the "comic formula"). It first introduces some kind of social issue between characters, especially one involving the court. Shakespeare lived in the seventeenth-century Kingdom of England, where the dramas of the court would have been especially entertaining to his contemporaries. As You Like It tells the story of Duke Senior, who has been usurped by his younger brother, Duke Frederick, and exiled to the Forest of Arden. Duke Senior's daughter, the princess Rosalind, is allowed to stay at the court solely to accompany Celia, her best friend and Duke Frederick's daughter; however, Rosalind too is eventually exiled as well. Celia chooses to follow Rosalind into exile, valuing her friendship with Rosalind more than her relationship with her father and the benefits of court life.
One of the primary social issues introduced in As You Like It is the concept of primogeniture, which is the right of the eldest son to inherit his parents' entire estate. Primogeniture was the norm in Shakespeare's England, so the practice would have been widely understood by an audience of Shakespeare's contemporaries. In As You Like It, Duke Senior is the eldest son and thus has the right to the dukedom, yet his younger brother takes over instead, challenging Duke Senior's rights as firstborn son. As You Like It concurrently follows the story of Orlando and Oliver, two brothers whose father, Sir Rowland de Boys, recently died. Oliver is the eldest son, so he has the right to inherit their father's entire property. However, once he has inherited everything, he refuses to give anything to Orlando, denying him the right to a proper education. Oliver harasses Orlando so much that the latter decides to flee to the Forest of Arden. The conflicts that result from this social issue of primogeniture is the source of the comedy in As You Like It.
Once the social issues of the play are established, we tend to see the setting of the play shift to a "transformational green space", which is some area apart from the area where the social issue was introduced and often where it is reconciled by the characters. The space is sometimes literally "green": in As You Like It, the transformational green space was the Forest of Arden. But it doesn't always have to be green: in The Merchant of Venice, we could argue that Belmont is the transformational space of the play, despite being a vibrant city atmosphere (far from any green), since that is where much of the dramas of the court seem to disappear, just like how they do in As You Like It. Duke Senior tries to justify his life in the forest, arguing that forest life is actually better than court life:
Love is also a typical element of Shakespearean comedy. As You Like It is filled with it. Orlando and Rosalind fall in love with each other at first sight during the play's opening court scenes, but neither character knows initially that the other reciprocates the love. Once Rosalind and Celia are exiled, in order to disguise themselves, they have dressed as a husband and a wife, respectively. Rosalind, dressed as a male, calls herself "Ganymede", and Celia, still dressed as a female, calls herself "Aliena". In order to purchase and own property in Shakespeare's England, you typically were expected to be male, which is primarily why Rosalind chose to disguise herself as Ganymede. This makes for some excellent comedy, however, when Orlando starts posting poorly-written love poems dedicated to Rosalind on trees in the forest, and Rosalind (dressed as Ganymede) discovers them. Rosalind is overwhelmed with glee that Orlando loves her back, but sadly, she cannot approach him without revealing her disguise. So what happens? Rosalind approaches in her disguise. Rosalind, dressed as Ganymede, walks up to Orlando and informs him that he is suffering from the "disease" that is love. Ganymede claims that "he" can cure this disease if Orlando can come to Ganymede's house and pretend that Ganymede is Rosalind, so that Orlando can act out his love. Genius, right?
Rosalind's cross-dressing brings forth a second social issue accentuated by As You Like It: gender. In Shakespeare's time, the biological difference between males and females was less well understood. The medical documentation at the time stated that male and female genitalia were anatomically the same, except that excess "heat" during pregnancy caused the genitals in males to "fall out", whereas a lack of heat during pregnancy caused the genitals in females to "remain inside". (An interesting social consequence of this belief was the theoretical notion that a female could become a male later in life if they were exposed to excess heat, or that a male could become a female if they weren't exposed to enough heat. This is, of course, completely ridiculous to think about in the twenty-first century, but to Shakespeare's contemporaries, this would have been a valid medical opinion.) As a result of the murkiness of the biological distinction, the difference between the genders arose primarily from societal expectations of their behavior, rather than biology. Females were, as Rosalind herself puts it, "the weaker vessel" (2.4.5); they were expected to be more emotional than men.
Rosalind's character challenges these expectations in myriad ways. In Shakespeare's time, actresses were not a thing. Female characters instead tended to be played by boy actors. So we have a male actor who plays a female character, who pretends to be a male character, who as the male character pretends to be the female character who she actually is. In a society where the definition of gender was already more-or-less unclear, this complicated tangle of gender swaps would have been doubly distressing – and doubly entertaining – for Shakespeare's contemporaries.
Another convention that is typical in Shakespearean comedies is the presence of a father figure who blocks or otherwise hinders a marriage between two characters. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, this is the comedy's central conflict which thrusts them into the forest (the transformational green space). Hermia is one of the main characters within the play, and her father, Egeus, wishes that she marry Demetrius. However Hermia loves a man named Lysander, not Demetrius. Egeus won't have it. In front of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, Egeus accuses Lysander of "bewitching" Hermia, and he asks the Duke to force Hermia to marry Demetrius, with very serious consequences if she refuses:
It is not obvious whether As You Like It has a similar father character, but such a father can be found in The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock's status as a Jew prevents his daughter, Jessica, from marrying the Christian Lorenzo, a fact Jessica abhors so much that she renounces Judaism and converts to Christianity in order to flee with Lorenzo. In The Tempest, the character Prospero puts on the pretense that he will block the marriage of his daughter, Miranda, and the King of Naples' son, Ferdinand, in order to confirm that Ferdinand's love is genuine. In the first act of Othello (although the play overall is very much a tragedy, the first act could be argued to be a mini-comedy itself, as it follows the conventions of Shakespearean comedy), Desdemona's father Brabanzio is highly skeptical about Othello and vehemently opposes Othello's betrothal to Desdemona. Brabanzio is utterly baffled when Desdemona reveals that she does truly love Othello, whom he sees as unworthy because of who he is: an African.
Shakespearean comedies also explore unrequited love. A popular character type from the Renaissance was the "Petrarchan lover", wherein a character, typically male, experiences unrequited love – which often goes unnoticed – and is mentally tormented as a result, to the point where the character would do anything for his love. In As You Like It, the character Silvius, one of the shepherds in the forest, falls in love with Phoebe, a shepherdess who does not reciprocate his love. Silvius laments Phoebe's rejection:
The final convention of a typical Shakespearean comedy – following the presentation of the social issue and the events of the transformational green space – is reconciliation through marriage. A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and Othello all have marriage scenes at the end of their respective comic storylines. In each case, the marriage affirms the reconciliation between the husband and his wife's father. Marriage is a quintessentially comic resolution, and indeed, at the end of As You Like It, Rosalind reveals her true identity, and Hymen, the god of marriage, magically appears and marries Rosalind and Orlando, while Duke Frederick suddenly comes to his senses and restores the dukedom to Duke Senior. There are other love plots in As You Like It that I just don't have enough room to fully discuss in this post, but several other characters are married by Hymen as well.
This sort of sudden reversal is common in Shakespearean comedies. We're all in the forest, living out the problems of forest life, when all of a sudden Shakespeare comes and tells us, "Hey, everything is okay again! Let's all marry!", and lots of singing and dancing ensues. The Tempest is famous for being Shakespeare's experiment into the genre of tragicomedy: the first four acts proceed as if the play would be a tragedy, but in the final act, things suddenly reverse, and the main character decides not to kill everybody. This may seem like lazy writing, but there is a purpose, and it is part of why Shakespeare is so widely acclaimed. Countless social issues are brought forth in Shakespeare's plays, whose relevance has extended centuries beyond Shakespeare's death: As You Like It gives us primogeniture and gender; A Midsummer Night's Dream has a father who tries to legally compel an arranged marriage; The Merchant of Venice's plot is largely driven by anti-semitism; The Tempest has a character named Caliban, who seems to represent the indigenous people of the lands Europe has colonized (e.g. Native Americans); and Othello presents the issue of racial prejudice, a theme whose lasting relevance is considerably poignant.
Key is the concept of ideological closure. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Duke Theseus resolves the legal conflict by choosing to set aside the law and overrule the will of the father by fiat. In As You Like It, Duke Senior gets his dukedom back, while Orlando, now married to the duke's daughter, has a seat in the court and a shot at the throne, which is better than being the eldest son of Sir Rowland de Boys any day. All of the main conflicts of the play seem to be resolved, but are we satisfied? Do we get ideological closure? We don't. We don't see how the underlying structural issues of primogeniture have been resolved. We don't see how, if Duke Theseus had chosen not to overrule Egeus like the law prescribes, whether the conflict would have been resolved adequately. Sure, it might have been all okay in the end in this case, but the fact remains that an eldest son still can deny younger sons everything, the fact remains that younger brothers still can feel so resentful as a result of primogeniture that they choose to usurp the older brother, the fact remains that fathers can put their daughters to death for not agreeing to marry whom he wants her to marry.
There are no easy solutions to many of the social issues presented by Shakespeare's plays, which is painfully evidenced by the lack of satisfactory resolutions today for most of them. (I'd like to think, though, that we've resolved primogeniture by now.) The plays have the effect of making a statement, drawing attention to the social issues, so that we can continue the discussion and work towards true ideological closure in the real world.
The themes of Shakespearean comedy continue to inspire works in the twenty-first century, as entire new media of entertainment are being explored. In the last century, film has enraptured audiences by combining audio and visuals – similar to a play – only a performance can be recorded to watch in the future virtually unlimited times, and directors now have the benefit of tools like retakes, close-ups, and live sets (rather than stages). Shakespeare's work has been adapted into films innumerable times, even with a few changes. Film have also led to the development of animation, with which stories could be told using drawn frames, as opposed to live-recorded action. Walt Disney pioneered this form of animated entertainment in the twentieth century with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and his company went on to create massively successful films that have become household names worldwide. The Lion King (1994) is based off of Shakespeare's monumental tragedy Hamlet, and its direct-to-video sequel, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998), is a variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a celebrated play which high school freshmen across the United States continue to study. Julie Taymor is the director of the Broadway adaptation of The Lion King, and she is also responsible for various film adaptations of Shakespeare plays. I recommend her adaptations of The Tempest and Titus Andronicus.
The themes of Shakespearean comedy can be found in twenty-first century computer-animated works, and I would like to focus attention on two of Blue Sky Studios' films, Rio (2011) and its sequel, Rio 2 (2014), as examples.
Right away, we can tell that Rio (2011) fits the mold of Shakespearean comedies. We are presented almost immediately with the social issue that the comedy intends to explore: animal smuggling. Rio follows the story of Blu, a critically endangered Spix's macaw, who is captured as a chick by poachers before he could learn how to fly. Smuggled to the United States, Blu is found alone in the snow by a young Minnesotan girl named Linda, who promises to keep him safe and raise him as a pet. The film's expository setting of Moose Lake, Minnesota, is safe and quiet, with a rigid, predictable routine, which is analogous to the predictable, rule-bound life of the court in Shakespearean comedies.
One winter day, a Brazilian ornithologist named Tulio informs Linda that Blu is – as far as they know – the last male bird of his entire species. In order to save his species, Blu must come to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – the film's namesake – and mate with Jewel, whom they believe to be the last remaining female. Rio is the diametrical opposite of Moose Lake, Minnesota, with temperatures warm all year round, a much larger population, and much more green. Rio de Janeiro definitely represents the "transformational green space" of Shakespearean comedies, and we see this clearly manifested in the romanticization of Brazilian culture within the film, with all the pretty colors, vibrant music, and of course, the Carnival celebration.
Like a good Shakespearean comedy, Rio introduces some love. Upon Blu's arrival in Rio, he meets Nico and Pedro, two native Brazilians who give Blu some misguided love advice, telling him to "make the first move" because Brazilian ladies "respond to confidence". Jewel, however, is not interested in romance. When Blu is thrown into an artificial jungle environment with her at Tulio's aviary, Jewel asks him, "Are you ready?", as in, "Are you ready to escape?" Blu, however, takes this in a completely different direction and, hearkening to Nico and Pedro's advice, attempts immediately to kiss her. Needless to say, it was a rough start to their relationship. They begin to fall in love, however, after Blu and Jewel are kidnapped by smugglers and chained to each other by the feet. The chain forces them to deal with each other, and as a result, they discover that the other isn't really all that bad. The film ends with the two birds together, flying happily into the sunset with their three baby chicks. Just like in a Shakespearean comedy, the film's primary conflict – the critical endangerment of the blue macaw species – is resolved with the marriage of two lovers.
The sequel film Rio 2 (2014) also aligns itself with Shakespearean tropes. Rio 2 sets up an interesting reversal of the role of Rio as a setting in the original film. In Rio 2, it is actually Rio that is the rigid, rules-bound space that is analogous to the court in Shakespearean comedies. Jewel finds a Brazil nut in the wild and wants to share her hard-won discovery with her kids, but to her disappointment, she finds out that her family is in a human-built kitchen, which already has a large supply of Brazil nuts. Of their children, Carla perpetually wears earbuds, Bia is incredibly book-smart, and Tiago is hyperactive, captivated by various human inventions like pyrotechnics, television, and a pocket knife. In the eyes of Jewel, the dependence of her family on humans is unhealthy, similar perhaps to how Duke Senior in As You Like It describes the "painted pomp" of the "envious court" as unhealthy compared to the "sweet" and peril-free life in the forest.
When the family watches a television broadcast in which Linda and Tulio (who are now married to each other – another marriage that fits in with the Shakespearean comic formula for the original film) announce the possible discovery of a whole flock of Spix's macaws in the wild, Jewel convinces the entire family to fly into the Amazon rainforest to help Linda and Tulio find them. Whereas Rio is analogous to the court in Shakespearean comedy, the Amazon rainforest is analogous to the transformational green space of Shakespearean comedy.
The film is self-aware too. There is an antagonist character named Nigel, a sadistic cockatoo, who seems to be obsessed with Shakespeare and the dramas of the theater. In Nigel's first lines of Rio 2, he quotes what is arguably the most famous scene that Shakespeare has ever written:
While in the rainforest, they do eventually discover the flock of Spix's macaws – and it turns out to be Jewel's old family! She reunites with her father, aunt, and childhood friends. Ding! Ding! Ding! Bells and whistles should be going off right now, because what do we have here? Yessir, a father figure! And if Rio 2 is faithful to the old Shakespearean comic formula of a father blocking a marriage, Jewel's father should be trying to drive a wedge between Blu and Jewel. And he does! At first, Jewel's father, whose name is Eduardo, is appreciative of Blu, offering his gratitude to him for having brought Jewel back to him safely. However, his tone immediately grows distant, as if Blu has not fully earned his trust yet – and somewhat understandably. Eduardo is just as mistrustful of humans as Jewel was in the original Rio film, since human criminal activity was how Jewel got separated from Eduardo in the first place. When Eduardo learns that Blu was once Linda's pet, any shred of credibility that Blu might have had with Eduardo was lost.
Furthermore, Jewel has a childhood friend named Roberto (voiced by Bruno Mars!), who is eminently more attractive, muscular, and musically talented than Blu. Although in reality, Jewel would probably never leave Blu for anyone else, the film makes it feel at times that Blu is competing with Roberto for Jewel, and Eduardo, the father figure, is clearly in favor of Jewel being with Roberto. Blu's insecurities cause him eventually to suggest to Jewel that they should return to Rio and try to get their old life back. Jewel, whose life has never been better since reuniting with a long lost family, misunderstands Blu. She thinks that he is being selfish and is thinking only about himself. Their disagreement creates a rift in their relationship.
This primary conflict resolves through union by a common enemy. A group of loggers who are illegally felling trees for lumber in the rainforest is about to encroach on the sanctuary of the Spix's macaw tribe. Blu, who is familiar with the ways of humans, convinces Eduardo and the tribe to utilize his knowledge of humans to fight back against the loggers. They are successful. Eduardo learns that not all humans are bad, and in the course of the battle, Roberto has a rather unattractive mental breakdown at the sight of a large tractor – it's as if he's suffering from some post-traumatic stress relating to humans. The last lines of dialogue are between Blu and Jewel – happily together again:
The lack of ideological closure serves as a poignant reminder to audiences that despite the happy ending of this particular story, poaching and illegal logging still exist and are out there today. They have not been stopped by the positive resolution of this one particular instance. Just as Shakespeare pointed out poignant systemic problems in As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello, director Carlos Saldanha points out these real-world systemic issues with Rio and Rio 2 and does so by utilizing some of the same tropes that Shakespeare utilized. Indeed, as the themes of Shakespearean comedy continue to captivate scholars and theatergoers, they also continue to inspire artists creating works in the twenty-first century, especially as entire new forms of media are being explored.
Note: All act, scene, and line numbers refer to the online version of the Norton Shakespeare: Third Edition. This blog post was an immense effort; it took over a year to write the whole thing (in fact, in the original draft of the post, I included a mention that "this year contains the 200th anniversary of Shakespeare's death" – alas, that was in 2016, so by the time I finished the post in 2018, it became a poignant indicator of how long I spent on this). I started it while I was taking the Shakespeare class at Ohio State, but did not have the time or the motivation to finish it until after I had finished the Shakespeare class at Berkeley. It feels amazing to finally get this out.
* * *
First, a little background. William Shakespeare is one of the most influential writers in the history of the English language. His birthdate is not documented, but we know he was baptized on April 26, 1564, and died on April 23, 1616. (2016 contained the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death.) His hometown was Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England, where he returned after retiring to live out his days. His work includes plays, sonnets, and narrative poems, and entire fields of English scholarship continue to be devoted to him. While I was a dual-enrolled high school senior taking courses at The Ohio State University, I elected to take ENGLISH 2220: Introduction to Shakespeare as my first semester class, which was the fourth and final English credit I needed to graduate high school. During my first semester as a freshman at the University of California, Berkeley, I took a comparative literature course called COMLIT 20: Episodes in Literary Culture: Shakespeare and the World. This course satisfied one of the seven-course breadth requirements for UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Science. Much of the content in this post was informed by the knowledge I gained through studying Shakespeare at both Ohio State and Berkeley.
A Shakespearean comedy follows several conventions of comedy that were prevalent in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries (some people like to call it the "comic formula"). It first introduces some kind of social issue between characters, especially one involving the court. Shakespeare lived in the seventeenth-century Kingdom of England, where the dramas of the court would have been especially entertaining to his contemporaries. As You Like It tells the story of Duke Senior, who has been usurped by his younger brother, Duke Frederick, and exiled to the Forest of Arden. Duke Senior's daughter, the princess Rosalind, is allowed to stay at the court solely to accompany Celia, her best friend and Duke Frederick's daughter; however, Rosalind too is eventually exiled as well. Celia chooses to follow Rosalind into exile, valuing her friendship with Rosalind more than her relationship with her father and the benefits of court life.
One of the primary social issues introduced in As You Like It is the concept of primogeniture, which is the right of the eldest son to inherit his parents' entire estate. Primogeniture was the norm in Shakespeare's England, so the practice would have been widely understood by an audience of Shakespeare's contemporaries. In As You Like It, Duke Senior is the eldest son and thus has the right to the dukedom, yet his younger brother takes over instead, challenging Duke Senior's rights as firstborn son. As You Like It concurrently follows the story of Orlando and Oliver, two brothers whose father, Sir Rowland de Boys, recently died. Oliver is the eldest son, so he has the right to inherit their father's entire property. However, once he has inherited everything, he refuses to give anything to Orlando, denying him the right to a proper education. Oliver harasses Orlando so much that the latter decides to flee to the Forest of Arden. The conflicts that result from this social issue of primogeniture is the source of the comedy in As You Like It.
Once the social issues of the play are established, we tend to see the setting of the play shift to a "transformational green space", which is some area apart from the area where the social issue was introduced and often where it is reconciled by the characters. The space is sometimes literally "green": in As You Like It, the transformational green space was the Forest of Arden. But it doesn't always have to be green: in The Merchant of Venice, we could argue that Belmont is the transformational space of the play, despite being a vibrant city atmosphere (far from any green), since that is where much of the dramas of the court seem to disappear, just like how they do in As You Like It. Duke Senior tries to justify his life in the forest, arguing that forest life is actually better than court life:
Now, my co-mates and brothers in exile,His argument is based on the conventions of the pastoral, focusing on the simple life of shepherds, how they don't have to worry about the evils of the court when they are in the forest, the polar opposite of the court. It makes sense for Duke Senior to employ this argument, as he has already experienced the "peril" of the "envious court" first-hand through the traitorous actions of his brother.
Hath not old custom made this life more sweet
Than that of painted pomp? Are not these woods
More free from peril than the envious court? (2.1.1-4)
Love is also a typical element of Shakespearean comedy. As You Like It is filled with it. Orlando and Rosalind fall in love with each other at first sight during the play's opening court scenes, but neither character knows initially that the other reciprocates the love. Once Rosalind and Celia are exiled, in order to disguise themselves, they have dressed as a husband and a wife, respectively. Rosalind, dressed as a male, calls herself "Ganymede", and Celia, still dressed as a female, calls herself "Aliena". In order to purchase and own property in Shakespeare's England, you typically were expected to be male, which is primarily why Rosalind chose to disguise herself as Ganymede. This makes for some excellent comedy, however, when Orlando starts posting poorly-written love poems dedicated to Rosalind on trees in the forest, and Rosalind (dressed as Ganymede) discovers them. Rosalind is overwhelmed with glee that Orlando loves her back, but sadly, she cannot approach him without revealing her disguise. So what happens? Rosalind approaches in her disguise. Rosalind, dressed as Ganymede, walks up to Orlando and informs him that he is suffering from the "disease" that is love. Ganymede claims that "he" can cure this disease if Orlando can come to Ganymede's house and pretend that Ganymede is Rosalind, so that Orlando can act out his love. Genius, right?
Rosalind's cross-dressing brings forth a second social issue accentuated by As You Like It: gender. In Shakespeare's time, the biological difference between males and females was less well understood. The medical documentation at the time stated that male and female genitalia were anatomically the same, except that excess "heat" during pregnancy caused the genitals in males to "fall out", whereas a lack of heat during pregnancy caused the genitals in females to "remain inside". (An interesting social consequence of this belief was the theoretical notion that a female could become a male later in life if they were exposed to excess heat, or that a male could become a female if they weren't exposed to enough heat. This is, of course, completely ridiculous to think about in the twenty-first century, but to Shakespeare's contemporaries, this would have been a valid medical opinion.) As a result of the murkiness of the biological distinction, the difference between the genders arose primarily from societal expectations of their behavior, rather than biology. Females were, as Rosalind herself puts it, "the weaker vessel" (2.4.5); they were expected to be more emotional than men.
Rosalind's character challenges these expectations in myriad ways. In Shakespeare's time, actresses were not a thing. Female characters instead tended to be played by boy actors. So we have a male actor who plays a female character, who pretends to be a male character, who as the male character pretends to be the female character who she actually is. In a society where the definition of gender was already more-or-less unclear, this complicated tangle of gender swaps would have been doubly distressing – and doubly entertaining – for Shakespeare's contemporaries.
Another convention that is typical in Shakespearean comedies is the presence of a father figure who blocks or otherwise hinders a marriage between two characters. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, this is the comedy's central conflict which thrusts them into the forest (the transformational green space). Hermia is one of the main characters within the play, and her father, Egeus, wishes that she marry Demetrius. However Hermia loves a man named Lysander, not Demetrius. Egeus won't have it. In front of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, Egeus accuses Lysander of "bewitching" Hermia, and he asks the Duke to force Hermia to marry Demetrius, with very serious consequences if she refuses:
... – And, my gracious duke,And like any good romantic comedy, we get some love triangle action with the introduction of the character of Helena. Helena is in love with Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia, who is in love with Lysander, who loves Hermia back. The play resolves itself when Oberon, the Fairy King, along with Robin Goodfellow, a Puck, use a love potion on Demetrius so that he loves Helena instead of Hermia (at first, Puck accidentally mistakes Lysander for Demetrius, accidentally causing Lysander to love Helena, much to the horror of Hermia and the incredulity of Helena). Since Demetrius and Helena now love each other, Duke Theseus overrules Egeus and endorses the marriages of Demetrius to Helena and Lysander to Hermia.
Be it so she will not here before your grace
Consent to marry with Demetrius,
I beg the ancient privilege of Athens:
As she is mine, I may dispose of her,
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death, according to our law
Immediately provided in that case. (1.1.38-45)
It is not obvious whether As You Like It has a similar father character, but such a father can be found in The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock's status as a Jew prevents his daughter, Jessica, from marrying the Christian Lorenzo, a fact Jessica abhors so much that she renounces Judaism and converts to Christianity in order to flee with Lorenzo. In The Tempest, the character Prospero puts on the pretense that he will block the marriage of his daughter, Miranda, and the King of Naples' son, Ferdinand, in order to confirm that Ferdinand's love is genuine. In the first act of Othello (although the play overall is very much a tragedy, the first act could be argued to be a mini-comedy itself, as it follows the conventions of Shakespearean comedy), Desdemona's father Brabanzio is highly skeptical about Othello and vehemently opposes Othello's betrothal to Desdemona. Brabanzio is utterly baffled when Desdemona reveals that she does truly love Othello, whom he sees as unworthy because of who he is: an African.
Shakespearean comedies also explore unrequited love. A popular character type from the Renaissance was the "Petrarchan lover", wherein a character, typically male, experiences unrequited love – which often goes unnoticed – and is mentally tormented as a result, to the point where the character would do anything for his love. In As You Like It, the character Silvius, one of the shepherds in the forest, falls in love with Phoebe, a shepherdess who does not reciprocate his love. Silvius laments Phoebe's rejection:
Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me; do not Phoebe.In Silvius, Shakespeare both employs and criticizes the Petrarchan lover trope. Phoebe treats Silvius like absolute garbage, yet Silvius continues to love her unconditionally. Shakespeare then introduces some triangle drama by having Phoebe fall in love with Ganymede (the male disguise of Rosalind), who obviously does not requite Phoebe's love. (This homoerotic theme is mirrored in Ganymede and Orlando's relationship too – productions have to choose whether Orlando sees through Rosalind's disguise and is just playing along or whether he is truly oblivious and does not realize until Rosalind reveals herself at the end. The name "Ganymede" would have already had homoerotic connotations to Shakespeare's contemporaries, since in Greek mythology, Ganymede was Zeus's homoerotic lover.) Phoebe eventually agrees to marry Silvius only if Ganymede can somehow prove to her that it is not possible for she and Ganymede to marry. The comedy ensues when Ganymede reveals (to Phoebe's utter shock) that "he" is actually Rosalind, thereby forcing Phoebe to marry Silvius (to Silvius's utter delight). Whether or not this marriage will last is left unresolved at the play's end.
Say that you love me not, but say not so
In bitterness. The common executioner,
Whose heart th'accustomed sight of death makes hard,
Falls not the ax upon the humbled neck
But first begs pardon. Will you sterner be
Than he that dies and lives by bloody drops? (3.5.1-7)
The final convention of a typical Shakespearean comedy – following the presentation of the social issue and the events of the transformational green space – is reconciliation through marriage. A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest, and Othello all have marriage scenes at the end of their respective comic storylines. In each case, the marriage affirms the reconciliation between the husband and his wife's father. Marriage is a quintessentially comic resolution, and indeed, at the end of As You Like It, Rosalind reveals her true identity, and Hymen, the god of marriage, magically appears and marries Rosalind and Orlando, while Duke Frederick suddenly comes to his senses and restores the dukedom to Duke Senior. There are other love plots in As You Like It that I just don't have enough room to fully discuss in this post, but several other characters are married by Hymen as well.
This sort of sudden reversal is common in Shakespearean comedies. We're all in the forest, living out the problems of forest life, when all of a sudden Shakespeare comes and tells us, "Hey, everything is okay again! Let's all marry!", and lots of singing and dancing ensues. The Tempest is famous for being Shakespeare's experiment into the genre of tragicomedy: the first four acts proceed as if the play would be a tragedy, but in the final act, things suddenly reverse, and the main character decides not to kill everybody. This may seem like lazy writing, but there is a purpose, and it is part of why Shakespeare is so widely acclaimed. Countless social issues are brought forth in Shakespeare's plays, whose relevance has extended centuries beyond Shakespeare's death: As You Like It gives us primogeniture and gender; A Midsummer Night's Dream has a father who tries to legally compel an arranged marriage; The Merchant of Venice's plot is largely driven by anti-semitism; The Tempest has a character named Caliban, who seems to represent the indigenous people of the lands Europe has colonized (e.g. Native Americans); and Othello presents the issue of racial prejudice, a theme whose lasting relevance is considerably poignant.
Key is the concept of ideological closure. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Duke Theseus resolves the legal conflict by choosing to set aside the law and overrule the will of the father by fiat. In As You Like It, Duke Senior gets his dukedom back, while Orlando, now married to the duke's daughter, has a seat in the court and a shot at the throne, which is better than being the eldest son of Sir Rowland de Boys any day. All of the main conflicts of the play seem to be resolved, but are we satisfied? Do we get ideological closure? We don't. We don't see how the underlying structural issues of primogeniture have been resolved. We don't see how, if Duke Theseus had chosen not to overrule Egeus like the law prescribes, whether the conflict would have been resolved adequately. Sure, it might have been all okay in the end in this case, but the fact remains that an eldest son still can deny younger sons everything, the fact remains that younger brothers still can feel so resentful as a result of primogeniture that they choose to usurp the older brother, the fact remains that fathers can put their daughters to death for not agreeing to marry whom he wants her to marry.
There are no easy solutions to many of the social issues presented by Shakespeare's plays, which is painfully evidenced by the lack of satisfactory resolutions today for most of them. (I'd like to think, though, that we've resolved primogeniture by now.) The plays have the effect of making a statement, drawing attention to the social issues, so that we can continue the discussion and work towards true ideological closure in the real world.
* * *
The themes of Shakespearean comedy continue to inspire works in the twenty-first century, as entire new media of entertainment are being explored. In the last century, film has enraptured audiences by combining audio and visuals – similar to a play – only a performance can be recorded to watch in the future virtually unlimited times, and directors now have the benefit of tools like retakes, close-ups, and live sets (rather than stages). Shakespeare's work has been adapted into films innumerable times, even with a few changes. Film have also led to the development of animation, with which stories could be told using drawn frames, as opposed to live-recorded action. Walt Disney pioneered this form of animated entertainment in the twentieth century with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), and his company went on to create massively successful films that have become household names worldwide. The Lion King (1994) is based off of Shakespeare's monumental tragedy Hamlet, and its direct-to-video sequel, The Lion King II: Simba's Pride (1998), is a variation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a celebrated play which high school freshmen across the United States continue to study. Julie Taymor is the director of the Broadway adaptation of The Lion King, and she is also responsible for various film adaptations of Shakespeare plays. I recommend her adaptations of The Tempest and Titus Andronicus.
 |
| Rio (2011) and Rio 2 (2014, pictured) contain themes present in Shakespearean comedy. |
Right away, we can tell that Rio (2011) fits the mold of Shakespearean comedies. We are presented almost immediately with the social issue that the comedy intends to explore: animal smuggling. Rio follows the story of Blu, a critically endangered Spix's macaw, who is captured as a chick by poachers before he could learn how to fly. Smuggled to the United States, Blu is found alone in the snow by a young Minnesotan girl named Linda, who promises to keep him safe and raise him as a pet. The film's expository setting of Moose Lake, Minnesota, is safe and quiet, with a rigid, predictable routine, which is analogous to the predictable, rule-bound life of the court in Shakespearean comedies.
One winter day, a Brazilian ornithologist named Tulio informs Linda that Blu is – as far as they know – the last male bird of his entire species. In order to save his species, Blu must come to the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – the film's namesake – and mate with Jewel, whom they believe to be the last remaining female. Rio is the diametrical opposite of Moose Lake, Minnesota, with temperatures warm all year round, a much larger population, and much more green. Rio de Janeiro definitely represents the "transformational green space" of Shakespearean comedies, and we see this clearly manifested in the romanticization of Brazilian culture within the film, with all the pretty colors, vibrant music, and of course, the Carnival celebration.
Like a good Shakespearean comedy, Rio introduces some love. Upon Blu's arrival in Rio, he meets Nico and Pedro, two native Brazilians who give Blu some misguided love advice, telling him to "make the first move" because Brazilian ladies "respond to confidence". Jewel, however, is not interested in romance. When Blu is thrown into an artificial jungle environment with her at Tulio's aviary, Jewel asks him, "Are you ready?", as in, "Are you ready to escape?" Blu, however, takes this in a completely different direction and, hearkening to Nico and Pedro's advice, attempts immediately to kiss her. Needless to say, it was a rough start to their relationship. They begin to fall in love, however, after Blu and Jewel are kidnapped by smugglers and chained to each other by the feet. The chain forces them to deal with each other, and as a result, they discover that the other isn't really all that bad. The film ends with the two birds together, flying happily into the sunset with their three baby chicks. Just like in a Shakespearean comedy, the film's primary conflict – the critical endangerment of the blue macaw species – is resolved with the marriage of two lovers.
The sequel film Rio 2 (2014) also aligns itself with Shakespearean tropes. Rio 2 sets up an interesting reversal of the role of Rio as a setting in the original film. In Rio 2, it is actually Rio that is the rigid, rules-bound space that is analogous to the court in Shakespearean comedies. Jewel finds a Brazil nut in the wild and wants to share her hard-won discovery with her kids, but to her disappointment, she finds out that her family is in a human-built kitchen, which already has a large supply of Brazil nuts. Of their children, Carla perpetually wears earbuds, Bia is incredibly book-smart, and Tiago is hyperactive, captivated by various human inventions like pyrotechnics, television, and a pocket knife. In the eyes of Jewel, the dependence of her family on humans is unhealthy, similar perhaps to how Duke Senior in As You Like It describes the "painted pomp" of the "envious court" as unhealthy compared to the "sweet" and peril-free life in the forest.
When the family watches a television broadcast in which Linda and Tulio (who are now married to each other – another marriage that fits in with the Shakespearean comic formula for the original film) announce the possible discovery of a whole flock of Spix's macaws in the wild, Jewel convinces the entire family to fly into the Amazon rainforest to help Linda and Tulio find them. Whereas Rio is analogous to the court in Shakespearean comedy, the Amazon rainforest is analogous to the transformational green space of Shakespearean comedy.
The film is self-aware too. There is an antagonist character named Nigel, a sadistic cockatoo, who seems to be obsessed with Shakespeare and the dramas of the theater. In Nigel's first lines of Rio 2, he quotes what is arguably the most famous scene that Shakespeare has ever written:
Nigel. To be or not to be: that is the question.It's the "to be or not to be" soliloquy from the third act of Hamlet! The fact that the film literally quotes Shakespeare and utilizes Shakespearean tropes to such a blatant degree makes me inclined to think that the writers were well aware that they were being inspired by Shakespeare. The character of Gabi is an example of an unrequited love. She loves Nigel, but because she thinks she is a poisonous frog, she believes her love can never be returned because to touch her lover would mean to kill her lover. This is an incredibly interesting and immensely tragic happenstance if you think about it, and the writers choose to resolve it through a deus ex machina – it's revealed at the end of the film that Gabi isn't actually poisonous after all; her parents had lied to her when she was young. Gabi does not exactly fit the Petrarchan lover trope, but I think her role is similar enough that we can chalk this up as another symmetry to Shakespearean comedy. Nigel has absolutely zero feelings for Gabi, and only keeps her around because her supposed "poison" is useful to him in his nefarious schemes.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.
Gabi. Oh, that's beautiful, Nigel. What does it mean?
Nigel. Death, Gabi. It's about death.
While in the rainforest, they do eventually discover the flock of Spix's macaws – and it turns out to be Jewel's old family! She reunites with her father, aunt, and childhood friends. Ding! Ding! Ding! Bells and whistles should be going off right now, because what do we have here? Yessir, a father figure! And if Rio 2 is faithful to the old Shakespearean comic formula of a father blocking a marriage, Jewel's father should be trying to drive a wedge between Blu and Jewel. And he does! At first, Jewel's father, whose name is Eduardo, is appreciative of Blu, offering his gratitude to him for having brought Jewel back to him safely. However, his tone immediately grows distant, as if Blu has not fully earned his trust yet – and somewhat understandably. Eduardo is just as mistrustful of humans as Jewel was in the original Rio film, since human criminal activity was how Jewel got separated from Eduardo in the first place. When Eduardo learns that Blu was once Linda's pet, any shred of credibility that Blu might have had with Eduardo was lost.
Furthermore, Jewel has a childhood friend named Roberto (voiced by Bruno Mars!), who is eminently more attractive, muscular, and musically talented than Blu. Although in reality, Jewel would probably never leave Blu for anyone else, the film makes it feel at times that Blu is competing with Roberto for Jewel, and Eduardo, the father figure, is clearly in favor of Jewel being with Roberto. Blu's insecurities cause him eventually to suggest to Jewel that they should return to Rio and try to get their old life back. Jewel, whose life has never been better since reuniting with a long lost family, misunderstands Blu. She thinks that he is being selfish and is thinking only about himself. Their disagreement creates a rift in their relationship.
This primary conflict resolves through union by a common enemy. A group of loggers who are illegally felling trees for lumber in the rainforest is about to encroach on the sanctuary of the Spix's macaw tribe. Blu, who is familiar with the ways of humans, convinces Eduardo and the tribe to utilize his knowledge of humans to fight back against the loggers. They are successful. Eduardo learns that not all humans are bad, and in the course of the battle, Roberto has a rather unattractive mental breakdown at the sight of a large tractor – it's as if he's suffering from some post-traumatic stress relating to humans. The last lines of dialogue are between Blu and Jewel – happily together again:
Jewel. Are you sure you can make the Amazon our home? With the heat and the creepy bugs?Directly after Blu says this, he turns around and sees a realistic-looking spider puppet, which Tiago is probably controlling off-screen. He is easily scared and is knocked off his feet in fright. Jewel catches him in her wings and laughs.
Blu. What? Are you kidding? I am Mr. Jungle, totally wild and very birdly.
Jewel. Maybe we can do summers in Rio.After this, the film ends. Now, of course, comes the ultimate question, both in Shakespearean comedy and in works of modern comedy. Does the story provide us with ideological closure? Blu's relationship with Jewel is mended, Eduardo and Roberto trust him now, and life seems to be good. Yet there's something that still feels unresolved. Indeed, in my view, neither Rio nor Rio 2 provides us with ideological closure because poaching and excessive logging are still systematic issues that remain unsolved – just because they stopped one small group of loggers/poachers does not mean more are not on their way. Additionally, I think Blu's conflict did not have adequate closure, as he is still clearly unacquainted with forest life (as evidenced by his final dialogue with Jewel, quoted above). Perhaps that might be a basis for a second sequel.
Blu. You're my one and only, Jewel.
The lack of ideological closure serves as a poignant reminder to audiences that despite the happy ending of this particular story, poaching and illegal logging still exist and are out there today. They have not been stopped by the positive resolution of this one particular instance. Just as Shakespeare pointed out poignant systemic problems in As You Like It, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, and Othello, director Carlos Saldanha points out these real-world systemic issues with Rio and Rio 2 and does so by utilizing some of the same tropes that Shakespeare utilized. Indeed, as the themes of Shakespearean comedy continue to captivate scholars and theatergoers, they also continue to inspire artists creating works in the twenty-first century, especially as entire new forms of media are being explored.
Note: All act, scene, and line numbers refer to the online version of the Norton Shakespeare: Third Edition. This blog post was an immense effort; it took over a year to write the whole thing (in fact, in the original draft of the post, I included a mention that "this year contains the 200th anniversary of Shakespeare's death" – alas, that was in 2016, so by the time I finished the post in 2018, it became a poignant indicator of how long I spent on this). I started it while I was taking the Shakespeare class at Ohio State, but did not have the time or the motivation to finish it until after I had finished the Shakespeare class at Berkeley. It feels amazing to finally get this out.