Annotated Bibliography for Meaning in Comedy by John Weld
In “Meaning in Comedy,” by John Weld, it talks about ten different comedies in or near the Elizabethan era. Focusing in more, this will talk specifically about Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors” and what Weld wrote about it. In The Comedy of Error, Shakespeare fulfills the unspoken requirement of comedy back then to start with a threatening tragedy and end happily. This comedy, staying true to it's name, is a comedy full of little mistakes that most people can and do make. One such example is mistaking identical twins multiple times within this play. All the people in the first part of this play are portrayed as very dim-witted, but all are presented as normal beings going about their lives normally, not the humorous characters that we see them as. Weld states that this type of farce comedy implies that “human beings are by their nature rather foolish, deceived by appearances, and funny in their folly.” This type of comedy was common in that time period, and is a reflection of Classical/Greek comedy (as defined by Aristotle, “it is… an imitation of men worse than the average… but only as regards [to] one particular kind, the Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly.”)
This source is very credible because it was written by an author who has also written for Gale a few times. It was written to explain comedy in the Elizabethan Era. It goes into detail explaining a lot of poems and plays including a famous one, A Comedy of Errors, which was very relevant at the time and when explained, can help us see what it was like in the Elizabethan Era. In comparison, Weld isn’t as useful as some of the other sources, such as the ones from Gale, but it still provides a bit of insight for this era. This source helps us see part of the social views of the time as well as helping us dissect the author and his personal points of view.
This source has changed my personal point of view of the Elizabethan era...