1. Caesar and Cleopatra By Bernard Shaw
COMEDY
Caesar and Cleopatra
By Bernard Shaw

2. COMEDY Focuses on people’s social behaviour.
Exposes and unmasks human weaknesses and vices.
Explores the discrepancy between the seeming and the real.
Starts with a problem, ends with its resolution.
Depends on a complicated plot (obstacles, confused identities, misunderstandings).
Instructive by nature and purpose. Comic relief instead of catharsis
COMEDY

3. History of Comedy Originated in Greece, 4th cent. BC.
First comedies (“Old Comedy”) were bawdy social satires. Aristophanes, “the father of comedy.”
Later, “New Comedy” formed the love-meets-obstacles model.

4. Main Genres of Comedy Farce (ex., commedia del arte) Romantic comedy
Comedy of humours
Comedy of manners
These types can be mixed together within one dramatic work.

5. Types of Comedy
“Low comedy” appeals to baser sense of humour (farce, slapstick comedy).
“High comedy” appeals to intellect (romantic comedy; comedy of humours; comedy of manners).

6. Brief History of English Comedy
Farcical elements in medieval mystery and morality plays (The Second Shepherds’ Play);
Renaissance comedy (Shakespeare, Ben Jonson);
Restoration comedy of manners (William Congreve, Aphra Behn).

7. Brief History of English Comedy
18th cent. sentimental comedy (Richard Steel) and comedy of manners/humours (Oliver Goldsmith);
19th cent. comedy of manners (Oscar Wilde);
20th cent. black/dark/absurd comedy (Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter).

8. Elements of Comedy Slapstick humour Situational humour; qui pro quo.
Satire.
Verbal humour.

9. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Irish playwright, writer, critic, journalist, social activist.
The only person to have received both the Nobel prize and an Oscar.
Famous for “Shavian” witticisms.
Co-founded the London School of Economics.
Tried to promote a reform of English spelling.

10. What do we know about Cleopatra and Caesar?

11. Caesar and Cleopatra by G.B.Shaw(1898)
The prologues
Language
Role of stage directions
Themes
Characters
Anachronisms
Intertextual references
Humour