How Are Aspects of Comedy Shown in the First Act of ‘the Taming of the Shrew’?

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How are aspects of comedy shown in the first act of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’? With a typical Shakespearean comedy, there isn’t a fixed type of ‘comedy’ used throughout the play. Therefore, they’ll be various aspects of comedy intertwined in the play. In the first act of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’, there are various aspects of Comedy shown in the two of the scenes. In Act One: Scene One, there is a ‘love at first sight’ moment within the meeting of characters. Lucentio instantly falls in low with the youngest Minola sister, Bianca. However, as this is a comedy as well, this particular moment may come under the genre of Romantic comedy. This is because Lucentio is a ‘stock character’ in the play, which is the ‘courtly lover’. Also, Bianca is shown as the virginal, young girl which is another ‘stock character’. In Romantic comedy, this sort of character is very typical and it is typical for a Romantic comedy to have stock characters within them. In addition to this, however it also seems as if Shakespeare is using Lucentio to mock Romantic plays. This would create a ‘parody’, this is when a mocking of a literal piece is made and Shakespeare is mocking Romance. He does this by Lucentio over-complementing Bianca; he praises her “sweet beauty in her face”, “he coral lips”, her breath which smelt like “perfume in the air” and what she surrounded was “sacred and sweet” and that he “laments (or cries) burns, pines and perishes” because of her beauty. This shows that aspects of Romantic Comedy and Parody are used in the first act of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ by the use of stock characters and mocking Romantic plays. In addition to this, another aspect of comedy is shown by the use of disguise. Disguise is the main theme throughout the act. A total of four characters are in disguises at the end of the act. In Act One: Scene One, it is Lucentio who disguises himself as a
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