Jon, yes, what you so nicely describe is a pretty ancient feature of
comedy, going back all the way to Menander and Plautus et alii. It's
called the "hymeneal ending." Frye really lays a lot of this out in
"Mythos of Spring," a great essay.
Gabe
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Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2007 10:47:56 -0500
From: Jon Corelis <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Funny ha ha
I forget now who it was who said that the way you can tell a comedy
from a tragedy is that a comedy ends with a marriage and a tragedy
begins with one. The remark sounds flippant, but it's basically true:
Hamlet, Oedipus Rex, The Tempest, Tom Jones, and the principle's
reductio ad absurdum in The Importance of Being Ernest, a sort of
reverse Hamlet where instead of everybody dying at the end everybody
gets married at the end.
[I think Anthony Asquith's 1952 film is the best filmed play ever and
probably the most perfectly cast film ever. I little stiff like most
films of plays, but it works. The 2002 Oliver Parker version, which
tries to "open it up" cinematically, is a disaster. If anyone reading
this has only seen that one, try to forget it and get a DVD of the
Asquith version instead.]
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Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
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