Shakespeare’s Middle Comedies: A Generation of Criticism

Summary

On one point, and one alone, critics of the past twenty-five years can be said to have reached agreement about Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night: they belong to a group of plays which are Shakespeare’s finest achievement in comedy. A generation ago such an assertion would have been open to challenge by those who had rediscovered the forgotten strengths of the last plays, but in 1961 Frank Kermode, contributing to Early Shakespeare (edited by J. R. Brown and B. Harris), dared to let it be known that he thought ‘The Mature Comedies’ better plays than the Romances, and his judgment has persisted and prevailed.

Mature is not the most fortunate name. Is the chestnut spire less mature than the fruit? 'Middle', though a drab term, has the advantage of neutrality over epithets such as happy, gay, golden, festive, joyous, all of which have proved counter-productive: A. P. Rossiter (Angel with Horns, 1961) reminds us of the 'Decameron-like hardness' of Much Ado About Nothing, and Ralph Berry detects much aggression in the abrasive encounters of As You Like It, while unnumbered critics stress the underlying sadness of Twelfth Night.