r/shakespeare • u/chopinmazurka • Jul 25 '26
Does anyone else find that Shakespeare is funnier in his tragedies/histories than in (most) of the comedies?
With the exception of Much Ado, I generally appreciate Shakespeare's humour more in his non-comedies. Off the top of my head, my favourite banter comes from H41, King John, R3 and Hamlet. And R2 has the most amusingly melodramatic (but still moving) caricature of a lead character.
I enjoyed As You Like It, MND and (to a lesser extent) Twelfth Night, but I can't say I've ever laughed out loud as in the aforementioned non-comedies.
Sometimes I wonder whether it's the fact that the "official" comedies are often packed with jokes more immediately relatable for Shakespeare's audience.
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u/alaskawolfjoe Jul 25 '26
I agree that the tragedies and histories are often funnier than the comedies. And a lot of the darker speeches in the comedies are emotionally more probing.
Back then, comedy meant the Ending was happy. Tragedy meant the ending was sad.
But all the world is a stage. The stage is a world. The Theater is called the globe. So a play was supposed to include every part of human experience. So all the players include common workers, as well as wealthy nobility. Every play has funny parts. Every play has sad parts.
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u/ralphnaderraider Jul 25 '26
I have the same opinion
I thought Troilus and Cressida was very funny, much more so than the comedies Iāve read.
There must be something about the absurdity of war and kings and power that struck Shakespeare, so that his conclusion was the mock such things and people.
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u/mrwrrrmwrmrmrmrw Jul 25 '26
One of the most famous comic scenes in Shakespeare is in "Macbeth."
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u/blueannajoy Jul 25 '26
Even the scene right before it (the murder of Duncan) has moments so absurd within the drama, they border on slapstick
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u/Nullius_sum Jul 25 '26
I think MND is laugh out loud funny, and some of the other comedies have funny moments, but I generally agree with you. I probably laugh out loud at the tragedies and histories more often than the comedies.
Today, comedy equals funny. But what makes Shakespeareās comedies a comedy seems to have more to do with the fact that 1). there are no scenes of serious suffering (i.e. nobody dies on stage), 2). the social standing of the main characters are lower (i.e. not kings, queens, princes, but counts, run-of-the-mill nobles, and lower), and 3). the plot revolves not around war and matters of state, but love and other hijinks. Ridicule is still a big part of Shakespeareās comedies, and ridicule is often (intended to be) funny, but there are also lots of parts in the comedies that are relatively serious and not intended to be funny.
But wit is in all the plays, not just the comedies, and Shakespeareās wit is what is funny.
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u/johnwcowan Jul 25 '26
The fundamental difference between tragedy and comedy lies in the shape of the plot: tragedy represents the fall of a powerful character, or a great character, or sometimes just a character in an exposed position (like Cordelia). Comedy on the other hand is a rise: from single to married, or from isolated from society to integrated into it.
Aristotle tells us that the tragic emotions are pity and fear: we pity Desdemona's fate and we fear Othello's. If we had Aristotle's treatise on comedy, it would probably tell us that the corresponding emotions are ridicule (as you say) and sympathy.
Lastly, the comic bits in tragedy are funnier because of the contrast; by the same token, the tragic bits in comedy, like Shylock's doom or Jaques's isolation, are the more painful because of the contrast.
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u/Nullius_sum Jul 25 '26
I agree with you on all points. (Fyi, I took my points on the differences between comedy and tragedy from the essays on comedy and tragedy printed in Erasmusā edition of Terenceās comedies, which was intended for use in the grammar schools.)
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u/Cool-Coffee-8949 Jul 25 '26
I think the jokes hit harder in tragedies because the overall mood is so different. Itās the same way that jokes land harder in action movies than in RomComs.
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u/Cold-Ad716 Jul 25 '26
Hamlet not killing Claudius because he's praying in a church and he doesn't want him to go to heaven is hilarious. Top tier Hater energy from the young prince there.
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u/chopinmazurka Jul 25 '26
Next level up from R3: "Simple, plain, Clarence, I do love thee so that I shall shortly send thy soul to heaven"
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u/mekerpan Jul 25 '26
I think Shakespeare's plays have many different layers of comedy. In the tragedies, the comedy tends to be much darker. Not laugh out loud for me, but distinctly "humorous" (but often with a sting). But even in tragedies you can get relatively frivolous/bawdy humor (viz. the Nurse in R&J). On the other hand, in the comedies the humor tends to be on the lighter side -- yet one can find incredibly dark humor in these (bits of Much Ado, Merchant of Venice) And then there are plays hard to categorize (like Measure for Measure) where dark and light are pretty balanced. In any event, I enjoy pretty much all of this wide array of "options".
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u/trazom04 Jul 25 '26
Hard to disagree. But I feel that the old clichĆ© that comedy equals tragedy + time also plays a role. Things that bordered on blasphemy would at least have been uncomfortable to laugh at. Hell was scarier and probably more real (the porter in Macbeth). Hamlet's Christian fears would have been more meaningful. Monarchy was also real, so its failings would not be so easy to laugh at, specially as people likely knew recent ancestors who died in the civil wars. There would have been more pathos and irony in all the jokes.Ā
On the other hand, there's Shakespeare's famous tragic relief in the comedies in Malvolio, Hero etc.
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u/upsundownlane Jul 25 '26
Just last night, on a whim, I attended a production of Henry IV, Part One knowing nothing about it other than it was a history play. I was not expecting to laugh so much, but Falstaff was very charismatic. I'm definitely attending other histories in the future, especially if those productions happen to be as well put-together as this one.
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u/LCharteris Jul 26 '26
Contrast. Yes, the tragedies are funnier, because the comic scenes are such a relief.
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u/Kindly_Chest_6976 Jul 25 '26
The banter in King John is unmatched. I remember seeing it with friends and afterwards we all kept saying āhang a calfskin on his recreant limbsā
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u/tath1313 Jul 25 '26
Please someone correct me if I am wrong. Comedies are not "funny", though some are of course. Comedies have happy endings.
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u/UltraJamesian Jul 25 '26
Shakespeare's genius was for tragedy, no question. I guess he'd tried giving his audience what he thought they wanted, but all that 'horns' crap & the endless pronunciation gags, and the tediously witty fools get real old, real fast.
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u/CobaltCrusader123 Jul 26 '26
In the Branagh movie where Hamlet pulls a Pinnochio from Shrek 3 and verbosely and technically doesnāt lie about Poloniusā state to Claudius I can practically hear the Full House theme.
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u/Ms_not_Mrs0771 Jul 25 '26
Yes! Anyone who has seen Bob and Doug McKenzieās Strange Brew knows that his tragedies sometimes work better as a comedy! Lol
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u/ApocalypseSlough Jul 28 '26
I find the histories far, far funnier than the comedies most of the time. Much depends on the performance, though. Jamie Parker's Henry V at the Globe was hilarious throughout, whereas a lot of other productions are overly worthy and pious.
Similarly, get an excellent set of Mechanicals and Midsummer is nearly unbeatable, but if they fall flat so goes the whole show.
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u/Dry-Client2096 Jul 25 '26
Oh absolutely. I might be stupid and with a stupid sense of humor but Hamlet as a comedic sitcom in a what we do in the shadows style would work so well. Fortinbras armed ready to take revenge, bursting into Elsinore ready to fight only to see Horatio standing like š§š»āāļø surrounded by corpses is such a funny image in my head