Comedies

Common characteristics of a Shakespearean Comedy:

• young lovers before marriage
• love at first sight
• multi-marriage ceremonies
• main character is a woman who is particularly intelligent and adept at wit, petspective, etc.
• there is often an excuse for cross-dressing (woman to man, which in Shakespeare's time translates as a boy playing a woman who then disguises herself as a man)
• humor based upon sexual innuendo and sexual punning
• Some plays that we consider to be "dark" were actually comedies in Elizabethan England (tragecomedies such as The Merchant of Venice)