ENGL 315 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Ancient Greek Comedy, Plautus, Komos

• School: McGill University
• Department: English
• Course: ENGL 315
• Professor: Dancy Mason

Document Summary

Flexible relationship between players and the audience that shakespeare will experiment with ya. Two cultural, ethical, irreconcilable ideals into competition with each other. Shakespeare pitting two social ideals: classical, heroic friendship: idealized relationship between (typically) two males where they identify with each other so much, they have an intimacy unavailable with women. This relationship in contention with romantic relationships, between, in this case, young men and young women, and problematizing that. This play doesn"t exactly work this out; a magical ending where problems are immediately resolved. Structural principle of putting two cultural ideals, irreconcilable, ethical, into competition with each other is something shakespeare got into as well. Asked to debate in latin; argue a proposition you must pretend to hold to be true even though you may not necessarily believe it. Practice of this debate is also something that plays into the notion of playing.