Salinger (1974) defines Twelfth Night as a “comedy about comedy” in which Shakespeare demonstrates his “fundamental debt to the earlier Renaissance tradition of comic dramaturgy and its constant sense of detachment from it” (p. 242), and it is from this point that this essay will discuss the functions of comedy with respect to whether Shakespeare adheres to and departs at various points from traditional Renaissance comedies and in which category of the comedy Twelfth Night can be placed. We will also discuss how realism aids the function of comedy in the play in the particular case of Twelfth Night, a function which is primarily a celebration of both Shakespeare's joy and comedy for its own sake. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Traditional Renaissance comedy is clearly present throughout the text, such as the derisive laughter directed at the garter-crossed Malvolio in yellow stockings or the oblivious Sir Andrew in the mock duel. The audience laughing at Malvolio serves to further ridicule him for his madness, but it also has comedic value in decidedly Shakespearean terms; we laugh at Malvolio to drive him away and show our dislike towards him because he ruins the fun. This is what Charlton (1966) chooses as definitive of a Shakespeare play, that the characters “inspire us to be happy with them; they do not simply make us laugh at them” (p. 277) and so our ridiculing of Malvolio is not so much a condemnation of his character but a way of siding the audience with the fun-loving people of the play, particularly Sir Toby. who claims many comic highlights in the play despite his relatively flawed character when considered against the puritanical Malvolio. Malvolio is ridiculed as representing the Puritans of the time (for example, with his dress); since the Puritans were largely against the tradition of theatrical comedy (Barton 1972, p. 164), Shakespeare represents them as against general mirth and enjoyment. We therefore side with Sir Toby and against Malvolio not because of their character, but because as an audience we don't want the fun to end. The characters also have a desperate need to continue the fun and seek new pleasures, something which for Shakespeare implies marriage as the ultimate goal when it is accepted that love has great power to awaken the spirit to new pleasures (Charlton 1966, pg 277). This, for Charlton, makes Shakespeare's works more imaginative than those of his rivals, rather than seeking existing pleasure and maximizing enjoyment. Shakespeare makes his characters constantly search for ideals and, through love/marriage, become "finer and richer representatives of human nature". " (Charlton 1966, p. 283). The primacy of love for the enrichment of the spirit and the opening of new avenues of pleasure, as discussed in the previous paragraph, is influential in Twelfth Night comedy in that, if the music is “the food of love” (Shakespeare 1993, page 29), then a lot of music is needed to nourish the spirit and this is the most musical of Shakespeare's plays so it plays an important role in the show, from the duke's actors to clown songs, and adds to the carnival and rowdy atmosphere that the show itself is a celebration. Much of the farce (paragraph below) adds to the comic celebration on stage, for example the Malvolio humiliation scene and the transvestite farce. of Viola would be a joy to perform as much as to seesections ; farce and two variants of picaresque comedy. It can be argued that Twelfth Night falls into all of these categories to some extent. The farce arises from the many laugh-out-loud moments provided by the Clown's pranks and ironic humor. The fact that Twelfth Night is also a comedy about transvestites adds to the farce by having the multiple disguises of a male actor playing a female character who in turn plays the role of a male. Add smaller than identical twins, the raucous atmosphere created by the music, the aforementioned pranks and all the elements of a farce are there to be seen. Farce, however, does not serve the primary function of this play since there is little celebration of joy in a farce. While the audience may laugh heartily, the comic devices described below must be combined with intense realism if the show is to have any effect on its audience; that is, an incredible farce cannot bring the audience to celebrate with the characters because the empathy is simply not present in a large enough quantity. Tillyard claims to be absent in the first variety of picaresque comedy, which actually focused on the underdog. Night but the instigators remain; Clown is our loser who is left alone (not married, but also literally left alone on stage) and the collective group, with the exception of Malvolio and his threat of revenge, plays the role of loser of right "and only right" ( Tillyard 1958, p. 6). survive the disaster. This feeling is accentuated during the final confrontation when Shakespeare suddenly changes from prose to verse to connect with Sebastian who comes with a solution to hurry up with the happy ending. Again, this does not fully provide the work with the celebration of joy that is its primary function. Of course we can empathize more with the madman without necessarily pitying him (and perhaps even seeing him as a bridge between Illyria and the everyday world) but there is still not the sense of belonging that the public has with, for example , Sir Toby. For this, Shakespeare requires a mixture of comic strategies, and it is the second variation of Tillyard's picaresque comedy (ibidem) that is most obvious for Twelfth Night, being the desire to throw off the burden of duty to oneself and society without paying too severe a price. price...[acknowledging]...perhaps ruefully, that you can't get away with it forever, that holidays are holidays only because they end, that humanity must after all stay in line, and that duty has the last word...[but also finally persuade the reader that the escape has]...had a fairly long innings and that duty must now reassert itself (Tillyard 1958, p. 6) Which, while not providing so much convivial laughter as pure farce , is used by Shakespeare to lighten the mood and spirit of his audience. While duty and the real world have the final say, it is a renewed reality that we enter. The title itself refers to a “festive and critical passage of time” during which characters are “swept out of their former selves and brought into a new harmony with a natural order and sequence in life” (Salinger 1974, p. 13 ), which is to say that the numerous marriages promise a harmonization with the natural order but also, above all, a return to normality. Everything that has been removed from the characters by disguise, deception, the “season of misrule” (Salinger 1974, pg 8) and the tragedies of shipwrecks is admirably restored with added value; Viola, for example, finds not only her brother but also a lover. Viola's trust in natural forces and human nature when she leaves time to untie the knots that she is unable todissolve (Shakespeare 1993, p. 48) places faith in the natural balance that has the capacity to regenerate and, through the ending, to give something more to those with spirits enriched by love (see previous discussion). Here, then, the audience can finally celebrate joy with the characters now that the play's integrity and its range of comic strategies have added to its realism. While the realism serves to add In addition to the celebration of joy that is the function of the comedy in Twelfth Night, the comedy also reciprocally serves to add realism to the play while also providing what we would today call a suspension of disbelief; just as a tragedy teases the audience with false hope before the disaster, so Twelfth Night teases us with a false disaster before the happy ending. This, according to Barton (1972, p. 164) adds realism to Twelfth Night while remaining true to the conventional social point of view of a comedy. In Twelfth Night the false disaster suggested during the stalemate of the final act comes as reality begins to re-enter the opera and the celebration comes to an end. For Sir Toby, he is denied the surgeon he needs because the surgeon is drunk. We are finally witnessing Tillyard's reaffirmation of duty (1958, p. 6); it is because of the excesses and all-night partying in which Sir Toby was so instrumental that he is now denied the practical aspects of medical care that were not needed in the utopia of bad government. Furthermore, Barton (1972) suggests that Sir Toby's marriage to Mary is comparable to Sir Andrew's repentance; both pay for vacations in “ways that have real-life consequences” (p. 175). Luckily, for the audience and the characters, disaster never strikes. However, the realism provided by the recognition of its possibility makes the ending easier to accept while also giving the feeling of dodging disaster (the first division of Tillyard's picaresque comedy, see above). This relief, felt once again by both the audience and the characters, adds to this celebration of joy; rather than accepting Barton's argument that knights are forced to pay for their holidays, it can be argued that the opposite is true and that Sir Toby and Andrew actually celebrate the most satisfying and joyful human feeling: getting away with having done something wrong. The comedic value here is only increased by Malvolio's final curse and promise of revenge, Sir Toby (and his sympathetic audience) once again getting the better of him even when it is doubtful whether he deserved it or not, after all Sir Toby relies on others like Malvolio to keep him in his life of leisure. Even though Clown's final song refers to the marriage becoming boring and the passage of time painful, the audience's optimism is maintained despite this realization; the couples in the play may find themselves in distant and mysterious Illyria but that place is brought back into the public's reality now that the festive period is ending by virtue of the aforementioned realism that Shakespeare brings to this comedy. Barton (1972, p. 164) describes the period of the title as one in which the world is turned upside down and there is a constant Christmas spirit. At the beginning of the show it is the captain who presents Illyria as a place to expect madness but it is during the Clown's song that Illyria approaches England; the disguises and deception vanish, and the natural order (and, arguably, the government) is restored with the characters intact, with redeemed spirits, and happy endings. By maintaining realism throughout the play in such a distant place, Shakespeare is able to bring this optimism home through his mix of Tillyard's comic variations. In