Saturday 23 December 2017

shkspr

What Shakespeare did, of course, was take pedestrian pieces of work and endow them with distinction and, very often, greatness. Before he reworked it Othello was insipid melodrama. In Lear’s earlier manifestation, the king was not mad and the story had a happy ending. Twelfth Night and Much Ado About Nothing were inconsequential tales in a collection of popular Italian fiction. Shakespeare’s particular genius was to take an engaging notion and make it better yet. In The Comedy of Errors, he borrows a simple but effective plot device from Plautus—having twin brothers who have never met appear in the same town at the same time—but increases the comic potential exponentially by giving the brothers twin servants who are similarly underinformed. 

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