Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Example Essay Example

Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Example Paper Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Introduction Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy What makes a Shakespeare comedy identifiable if the genre is not distinct from the Shakespeare tragedies and histories? This is an ongoing area of debate, but many believe that the comedies share certain characteristics, as described below: Comedy through language: Shakespeare communicated his comedy through language and his comedy plays are peppered with clever word play, metaphors and insults. 1. Love: The theme of love is prevalent in every Shakespeare comedy. Often, we are presented with sets of lovers who, through the course of the play, overcome the obstacles in their relationship and unite. Love in Shakespearean comedy is stronger than the inertia of custom, the power of evil, or the fortunes of chance and time. In all of these plays but one (Troilus and Cressida), the obstacles presented to love are triumphantly overcome, as conflicts are resolved and errors forgiven in a general aura of reconciliation and marital bliss at the playâ₠¬â„¢s close. Such intransigent characters as Shylock, Malvolio, and Don John, who choose not to act out of love, cannot be accommodated in this scheme, and they are carefully isolated from the action before the climax. Complex plots: The plotline of a Shakespeare comedy contains more twists and turns than his tragedies and histories. Although the plots are complex, they do follow similar patterns. For example, the climax of the play always occurs in the third act and the final scene has a celebratory feel when the lovers finally declare their love for each other. Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Body Paragraphs Moreover, the context of marriage—at least alluded to, is the cap-stone of the comedic solution, for these plays not only delight and entertain, they affirm, guaranteeing the future. Marriage, with its promise of offspring, reinvigorates society and transcends the purely personal element in sexual attraction and romantic love. Mistaken identities: The plot is often driven by mistaken identity. Sometimes this is an intentional part of a villain’s plot, as in Much Ado About Nothing when Don John tricks Claudio into believing that his fiance has been unfaithful through mistaken identity. Characters also play scenes in disguise and it is not uncommon for female characters to disguise themselves as male characters, seen in Portia in the Merchant of venice. Shakespeare’s 17 comedies are the most difficult to classify because they overlap in style with other genres. Critics often describe some plays as tragi-comedies because they mix equal measures of tragedy and comed y. For example, Much Ado About Nothing starts as a Shakespeare comedy, but takes on the characteristics of a tragedy when Hero is disgraced and fakes her own death. At this point, the play has more in common with Romeo and Juliet, one of Shakespeare’s key tragedies. The 18 plays generally classified as comedy are as follows: 1 All’s Well That Ends Well 2 As You Like It 3 The Comedy of Errors 4 Cymbeline 5 Love’s Labour’s Lost 6 Measure for Measure 7 The Merry Wives of Windsor 8 The Merchant of Venice 9 A Midsummer Night’s Dream 10 Much Ado About Nothing 11 Pericles, Prince of Tyre 12 The Taming of the Shrew 13 The Tempest 14 Troilus and Cressida 15 Twelfth Night 16 Two Gentlemen of Verona 7 The Two Noble Kinsmen 18 The Winter’s Tale 2. 3. Comedy is a drama that provokes laughter at human behavior, usually involves romantic love, and usually has a happy ending. In Shakespeare’s day the conventional comedy enacted the struggle of young lovers to surmount some difficulty, usually presented by their elders, and the play ended happily in marriage or the prospect of marriage. Sometimes the struggle was to bring separated lovers or family members together, and their reunion was the happy culmination (this often involved marriage also). Shakespeare generally observed these conventions, though his inventiveness within them yielded many variations. 4. Eighteen plays are generally included among Shakespeare’s comedies. In approximate order of composition, they are. These works are often divided into distinct subclasses reflecting the playwright’s development. The first seven, all written before about 1598, are loosely classed as the ‘early comedies’, though they vary considerably in both quality and character. The last four of these—Loves Labour’s Lost, the Dream, the Merchant, and the Merry Wives—are sometimes separated as a transitional group, or linked with the next three in a large ‘middle comedies’ classification. The Merry Wives is somewhat anomalous in any case; it represents a type of comedy—the ‘city play’, a speciality of suchwriters as Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker—that Shakespeare did not otherwise write. The next three plays. Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, are often thought to constitute Shakespeare’s greatest achievement in comedy; all written around 1599-1600, they are called the romantic, or mature, comedies. The next group of three plays, called the Problem Plays, which include Alls Well that Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure that were written in the first years of the 17th century, as Shakespeare was simultaneously creating his greatest tragedies. The final cluster, all written between about 1607 and 1613, make up the bulk of the playwright’s final period. They are known as the Romances which include Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, and often The Two Noble Kinsman. (The problem plays and romances were intended to merge Tragedy and comedy in Tragicomedies. Many minor variations in this classification scheme are possible; indeed, the boundaries of the whole genre are not fixed, for Timon of Athens is often included among the comedies, and Troilus and Cressida is sometimes considered a tragedy. 5. Shakespeare’s earliest comedies are similar to existing plays, reflecting his inexperience. The Comedy of Errors—thought by many scholars to be his first drama, though the dating of Shakespeare’s early works is extremely difficult—is built on a play by the ancient Roman dramatist Plautus. Characteristically, Shakespeare enriched his source, but with material from another play by Plautus. The Subplot of The Taming of the Shrew was taken from a popular play of a generation earlier, and the main plot was well known in folklore, though the combination was ingeniously devised. The Two Gentlemen of Verona likewise deals with familiar literary material, treating it in the manner of John Lyly, the most successful comedy writer when Shakespeare began his career. 6. However, the young playwright soon found the confidence to experiment, and in Loves Labour’s Lost, the Dream, and the Merchant, he created a group of unusual works that surely startled Elizabethan playgoers, though pleasurably, we may presume. In the first he created his own main plot and used a distinctively English variation on the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte traditions for a sub-plot. He thus produced a splendid array of comic situations. The play’s abundant topical humor was certainly appreciated by the original audiences, although today we don’t always know what it is about. In any case, the major characters are charming young lovers, the minor ones are droll eccentrics, and the closing coup de theatre, with which a darkening mood brings the work to a close, is a stunning in novation. Already, the eventual turn towards tragicomedy is foreshadowed. A Midsummer Night’s Dream mingles motifs from many sources, but the story is again the playwright’s own; moreover, the play’s extraordinary combination of oddity and beauty was entirely unprecedented and has rarely been approximated since. The Merchant of Venice mixes a social theme, usury, into a conventional comedy plot to deepen the resonance of the final outcome as well as to vary the formula. Here, the threat that is finally averted is so dire as to generate an almost tragic mood, again anticipating developments later in the playwright’s career. . The mastery that Shakespeare had achieved by the late 1590s is reflected in the insouciance of the titles he gave his mature comedies (Twelfth Night’s subtitle—’What You Will’—matches the others). That mastery is accompanied by a serious intent that is lacking in the earliest comedies. Shakespeare co uld not ignore the inherent poignancy in the contrast between life as it is lived and the escape from life represented by comedy. In Much Ado, as in The Merchant of Venice, a serious threat to life and happiness counters the froth of a romantic farce. Even in As You Like It, one of the most purely entertaining of Shakespeare’s plays, the melancholy Jaques interposes his conviction that life is irredeemably corrupt. Feste’s song at the close of Twelfth Night gives touching expression to such sentiments, as he sends us from the theatre with the melancholy refrain, ‘the rain it raineth every day’ (5. 1. 391). We are not expected to take him too seriously, but we cannot avoid the realization that even the life of a jester may be a sad one. The mature comedies thus further a blending of comedy and tragedy. 8. In the end, however, all of Shakespeare’s comedies, including the later problem plays and romances, are driven by love. Love in Shakespearean comed y is stronger than the inertia of custom, the power of evil, or the fortunes of chance and time. In all of these plays but one (Troilus and Cressida), the obstacles presented to love are triumphantly overcome, as conflicts are resolved and errors forgiven in a general aura of reconciliation and marital bliss at the play’s close. Such intransigent characters as Shylock, Malvolio, and Don John, who choose not to act out of love, cannot be accommodated in this scheme, and they are carefully isolated from the action before the climax. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 9. In their resolutions Shakespeare’s comedies resemble the medieval Morality Play, which centeres on a sinful human who receives God’s mercy. In these secular works, a human authority figure—Don Pedro or Duke Senior, for instance—is symbolically divine, the opponents of love are the representatives of sin, and all of the participants in the closing vignette partake of the play’s love an d forgiveness. Moreover, the context of marriage—at least alluded to at the close of all but Troilus and Cressida—is the cap-stone of the comedic solution, for these plays not only delight and entertain, they affirm, guaranteeing the future. Marriage, with its promise of offspring, reinvigorates society and transcends the purely personal element in sexual attraction and romantic love. Tragedy’s focus on the individual makes death the central fact of life, but comedy, with its insistence on the ongoing process of love and sex and birth, confirms our awareness that life transcends the individual. 10. We will write a custom essay sample on Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Example specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Example specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy Essay Example specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer

Natural Selection Among the Foraging Blue Jays

Natural Selection Among the Foraging Blue Jays David Stephens and Dack Anderson discussed the theory of short-term benefits as guide to animal feeding decisions. In a series of experiments conducted in an operant laboratory, blue jay birds were the subjects of the study. The foraging animals were tested in two situations namely the self control paradigm and the patch-use problems.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Natural Selection Among the Foraging Blue Jays specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The article details how natural selection among the foraging blue jays favour short term rules which result to long term consequences. The paper discusses how to combine time and amount in a suitable currency that mirrors the fitness consequences of different time/ amount sequences and determines the decision rules foragers apply to select the currency maximizing time/ amount sequence from a determined set of possibilities and investigating the relationship between decision r ules and currencies. Foragers’ farsighted way in choosing is contradicted by laboratory experiments where the blue jays made short sighted decisions. The logic of farsightedness is best illustrated in the traditional studies of Stephens and Krebs (1986) where long term rate maximizing currency is infinite gain/ infinite time however this logic cannot be generally valid because food gained after starvation is not of any use thus the expression is too farsighted. Two groups of scholars presented an alternative to this proposal where the best rate is attained one at a time thus being short sighted (Bateson and Kacelnik, 1996; Baum and Rachlin, 1969) but Stephens and Krebs (1986) argued that when the maximum rate is taken from each chance, time may be exhausted on a mediocre alternative. The authors concluded that both long term and short term models presented are of extremes thus introducing a discount rate which measures the comparative loss of value in order to create intermed iate term models. In this notion the long term model is determined when the discount rate is zero since the value of the gain is the same even if it was obtained early or late in a sequence but as the discount rate becomes larger the approach becomes that of the short term model. The discount rates are expected to be non-zero.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More According to the authors, the long term model is the most sensible because it provides a rational estimate of rate even in a restricted time horizon. It is farsighted enough to pass over bad options and rational discount rates are small. Short sightedness is evident in the notion that animals often make prejudiced decisions which was concluded in the self control experiment. In a self control situation long term rate model predicts that animals will choose Gain1 over inter-trial interval plus delay before the small amount plus post feeding delay over the second alternative which is post feeding delay over inter-trial interval plus delay before the large amount as long as the former is greater than the later with consideration to temporal rates such as delay to food, post feeding delay and inter-trial delay. However these temporal rates are not treated equally by animals according to experiments. Evolutionary models can accommodate small discounting outcomes but they challenge the predictions of self control experiments. The latter show that short term hindrances have large effects. Scholars interpret such disagreements by disregarding the model and accepting the data. The blue jays were given a binary choice in the self control situation while the same subjects were given a choice to continue or leave where they follow a future patch alternative in the patch-use exploitation. The latter shows the effects of travel time on rate maximizing patch residence time. In the patch-use situation, the jays’ choice has comparable consequences but the subjects choose whether to wait in the patch and gather (G2 – G1) extra units of food or to leave at once after attaining a small amount (G1). In order to determine the different patterns of choices in the self control and patch-use contexts, the authors considered such in the context of 50 and 5 discount rate levels of delay to small. Results of the experiment concluded that when the delay to small was of ample amount (50) preferences of the blue jays were not affected by the ITI thus large outcome in the patch-use context was more favourable but when the delay to small was few (5), outcome was more complex. In the control situation, the jays’ favour for large decreased together with the ITI while in the patch-use situation the subjects’ favour increased for the large together with the ITI. The jays preferred large when the ITI was small in the self control situation while in the patch-use situation, t he foraging animals preferred large when the ITI was large.Advertising We will write a custom report sample on Natural Selection Among the Foraging Blue Jays specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More As predicted in the long term theory, the patch-use situation showed that the jays favoured large delayed outcomes as ITI increased but in the self control situation the outcomes are not the same. The authors presented situations that prove how results from both experiments (patch-use and self control) lead to long term rate maximizing. In the long term model situation results show that the patch-use context is in line with the long term rate model while the self control situation contradicts. According to the short term rate model, results of the self control treatment of binary choice conform to short term rate models while the outcomes of patch-use exploitation conforms to the long term rate currency. Both the self control and patch use situat ions were compared in the same rule different outcome analysis. This analysis resulted in the conclusion that in the patch-use experiment, short term rates were obtained with long term rate maximization but in the self control situation the conclusion differs. The authors concluded that short term rule always agrees with the difference in long term rates according to the patch-use exploitation situation though such rule produces outcomes in relation to short sighted behaviour in the self control situation thus the subjects use the same short term rule in deciding for both cases but producing different outcomes. For the adaptive short term rules scenario, it has been found out that the natural process of selection among foraging animals has favoured short term rate comparisons for they measure long term rate maximization in natural decision contexts. The hypothesis deals with the usage of the same rule in patch-use and self control contexts and the representation of patch condition a s natural foraging problems. The long term rate currency of foraging theory has been contradicted by self control studies and risk sensitive preferences. According to the risk sensitivity studies of Kacelnik and Bateson (1996), foraging animals favour changeable postponements even though unlimited time horizon rate models forecast indifference to unpredictability. The authors of the article argue that the evidence of self control of short term rules is not evidence of short term currency because in natural decision context, short term rules can have long term consequences.Advertising Looking for report on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Finally the authors theorized that pragmatic patterns of favour can be accounted by long term rate currency which includes reasonable levels of discounting. Foraging species favour attaining short term rewards with a minimal advantage over long term ones in abundance. The usual technique of elicitation of the inter-temporal discount rate has been critically challenged by scholars over the years when empirical studies discovered systematic violations of assumptions such as time consistency of preferences, stationary, constant discounting and utility maximization (Kalenscher and Pennartz, 2007). The discounted utility theory has limited descriptive validity because it fails to effectively depict the authenticity of inter-temporal choice behaviour. â€Å"Common difference and immediacy effects and the fact that preference reversals occur after deferring all choice alternatives into the future by the same interval, violate assumptions of consistent choice: (Kalenscher and Pennartz, 200 7). Foraging animals’ preferences do not depend on the proportion of gains and time in between such achievements but rather on the waiting time prior to the rewards. The technique becomes incoherent with the original and most favourable foraging formulation where animals are seen to sacrifice rather than maximize. The inter-temporal choice notion that it can be compressed into a single discount function is challenged by other variances such as the sign, magnitude and framing effects. When making inter-temporal decisions, foraging animals break vital assumptions in discount rates. Other limitations of such technique include the inability of long term theory to predict consistently the increase of favour for large together with ITI because choice in proportion cannot exceed 100% thus broad conditions exist where ITI has no effect. In the patch-use situation, ITI is hard to detect when favour for large is high, another drawback is with regards to the linear relationship in focus ing on temporal elements, where in reality the relationship between the amount and value can never be linear and lastly the authors’ assumption of animals’ preferences of short term rules over long term rules are not mutually exclusive. Critics of the usual technique of elicitation of the inter-temporal discount rate methods can be traced to their inability to provide consistent outcomes over time. Systematic violations also occur with regards to assumptions such as time consistency of preferences, stationary, constant discounting and utility maximization. These factors gravely affect results thus the method is questionable in providing valid outcomes in experiments. Hyperbolic discounting is inconsistent because it only measures the discounted outcomes of the near future and rather than the far future. The pattern of discounting is also inconsistent because how one subject’s decisions may be based on different aspects one considers than the other. In human beha viour discounting is influenced by the person’s expectations, moods, sign, glucose levels and the like which may differ from one person to another. Experimental ecology has provided a method in testing the inter-temporal choice behaviours of human beings though discounting can only provide outcomes of the near future and is limited to predict results in the far future, experimental ecology enables scholars to study patterns of choice. Patterns can be explained through discounting methods offered by the experiment in distinguishing the delay and interval of discounting. The experiment can help scholars analyse human behaviours in terms of people’s decisions and the future consequences they regard in making such choices by considering the variability of discount rates the experiment may provide. Experimental ecology provides scholars close to accurate approximations of outcomes through a series of controlled examinations of hypothesis and theories. It enables scholars to manipulate evidences and test models where distractions in their natural habitats may disrupt findings. If a model disagrees with data, the former will be rejected and the latter will be followed accordingly. In determining the feeding decisions of foraging animals such as blue jays, Stephen and Anderson compared the self control and patch-use experiments where in the former the jays were given a binary choice, obtain gains in a short period of time even if it is a few in quantity or wait for a period of time and obtain more gains while the in the latter case jays are given a choice to attain a gain and leave or continue and receive more gains. In both experiments the approach is similar but outcomes vary. In the self control approach the authors found out that it tends to lean on the short term model and that the patch-use situation is associated with the long term model. Techniques in the elicitation of inter-temporal discount rates help predict outcomes in behaviours of foraging animals in their decisions towards feeding but it presents limitations such as the violations of the theory’s assumptions and the consistency of predictions which may present as a problem in synthesizing conclusions for experiments. Furthermore, the assumption of linear relationships in the experiment deemed itself inconsistent because in reality relationships can never be linear. Though experimental ecology has its critics, contributions of such in the field can be attributed to its ability to control external factors that may disrupt results of the study and through experimentations theories and hypothesis can be proven through actual examinations. Reference List Bateson, M and Kacclnik, A 1996. â€Å"Rate currencies and the foraging starling: the fallacy of the averages revisited†, Behavioural Ecology, vol. 7, no. 3, pp.341-352. Baum, W and Rachlin, H 1969. â€Å"Choice as time allocation†, Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behaviour, vol.12, no. 6, pp .861-874. Kacclnik, A and Bateson, M 1996, â€Å"Risky theories – the effects of variance on foraging decisions†, American Zoology, vol. 36, pp.402-434. Kalenscher, T and Pennartz, C 2007, â€Å"Is a bird in the hand worth two in the future? The neuroeconomics of inter-temporal decision making†, Progressive in Neurobiology, pp.1-32. Available from:  https://www.journals.elsevier.com/progress-in-neurobiology [26 December 2011]. Stephen, D and Krebs, J 1986, Foraging theory: Monographs in behaviour and ecology, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.

Reading journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 8

Reading journal - Essay Example The story is covered in the dailies, it is assumed that the dead person seemingly died of starvation (Krakauer 61-71). Chapter 11 is set at the Chesapeake Beach where Walt McCandless is interviewed at home after the recovery of his son’s body at an abandoned bus. McCandless seemingly so much pain to his parent. The bond between mother-father and child was completely broken. It is in this chapter that one questions whether McCandless parent were actually responsible for the son’s death (Krakauer 72-81). In chapter 12, the character of McCandless is questioned. It is questioned whether his personality was shaped in the course of his youth. McCandless was said to take a trip to summer prior to joining college. It is at this point that he promises to have constant communication with his parents, but later on he stopped communicating completely. Upon his return home, McCandless had changed completely. He had lost a lot of weight and his hair was unkempt. We later learn that he had lost his way in Mojave Desert and almost died due to the harsh conditions in the desert (Krakauer 82-87). McCandless is advised by his parents, but does not heed to the advice. The underlying assumptions/meanings the author intends for me to learn relate to the individual changes and the factors that may cause the changes. For the case of McCandless, one would argue that he felt superior in one way or another even to the point of leaving for Alaska. He may seem unique in his way of doing things, but he, at times, lacked common sense explaining why he faced the toughness of the nature despite him being sane as opposed to Waterman. This explains why he caused so much pain especially to his parents that had high hopes on him. From the work, I am of the opinion that the author aims at explaining the changes that individuals go through in their day to day lives. I agree with the author’s premise that one can determine or shape their future. The reading makes