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Genre is not merely a label — it is a structural force that shapes how Shakespeare treats love. The conventions of comedy, tragedy, and romance create different expectations, different possibilities, and different meanings for the relationships at the centre of each play. Understanding genre is essential for AO2 (form and structure) and for writing the kind of sophisticated comparative analysis that examiners reward at the highest grades.
Paper 1, Section A: Shakespeare (AQA 7712). Set text: Othello, with reference to Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and The Taming of the Shrew.
AO Focus in this lesson Weight here AO1 Argument that uses genre as an analytical category; the vocabulary of comedy, tragedy, romance, problem play, peripeteia, anagnorisis Developed AO2 Dominant. Genre as a feature of structure — how generic shape determines the meaning of love Dominant AO3 Generic conventions and audience expectation in the period; the tragic tradition Supporting AO5 Genre criticism (Barber, Boas, Bradley, Dollimore); the debate over Measure for Measure's instability Strong Section A assesses AO1, AO2, AO3 and AO5 (not AO4). Genre is the single most powerful structural lever a candidate can pull for AO2: the same event — a marriage, a death, a reunion — means radically different things depending on the generic frame the play establishes.
The core insight: love is not treated differently by comedy, tragedy and romance by accident. Genre is a system of expectations. Comedy promises that love will be rewarded by marriage; tragedy promises that intense love will be punished by death; romance promises loss followed by qualified restoration. Shakespeare can satisfy, frustrate, or complicate each promise — and the friction is the meaning.
The four set plays span Shakespeare's generic range:
| Play | Genre | Date | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Taming of the Shrew | Comedy | c.1590–92 | Marriage as resolution; verbal wit; disguise and deception; festive conclusion |
| Othello | Tragedy | c.1603–04 | Noble protagonist; fatal flaw or external evil; catastrophic conclusion; death |
| Measure for Measure | Problem play / dark comedy | c.1604 | Resists neat generic classification; comic structure but tragic emotional register; forced marriages at the end |
| The Winter's Tale | Romance / tragicomedy | c.1610–11 | Tragedy in first half; comedy in second; separated by a sixteen-year gap; loss followed by qualified restoration |
Key Definition: A problem play (a term coined by the critic F.S. Boas in 1896) is a play that resists classification as either comedy or tragedy. Measure for Measure is the most frequently cited example: it has a comic structure (it ends in marriages) but its emotional content is deeply troubling, and its "happy ending" is anything but straightforward.
Shakespearean comedy follows recognisable structural patterns:
| Stage | Feature | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Initial order | A stable social world with established rules and hierarchies | Padua's patriarchal household in The Taming of the Shrew |
| Disruption | Love disrupts the social order — a daughter rebels, a couple forms across forbidden boundaries | Katherine's "shrewishness" and Bianca's secret suitors |
| Green world / festive space | Characters move to a space outside normal social rules (forest, festival, disguise) | Petruchio's country house; the pastoral Bohemia in The Winter's Tale |
| Resolution | Marriage (usually multiple marriages) restores social order — but transformed | Kate's submission speech; the triple marriage at the end |
| Festive conclusion | The play ends with a feast, dance, or celebration that includes the audience | Lucentio's banquet (5.2) |
Comedy typically reinforces patriarchal order even as it temporarily disrupts it. Women may exercise agency during the comic action — disguising themselves, choosing their own partners, outwitting men — but the conclusion returns them to conventional feminine roles:
AO5 — Critical Interpretations: C.L. Barber, in Shakespeare's Festive Comedy, argues that comedy creates a "release" from social constraints followed by a "clarification" that reaffirms the social order. Applied to The Taming of the Shrew, this suggests that Kate's rebellion is the temporary release, and her submission is the clarification — the reassertion of patriarchal norms. Feminist critics have challenged this reading, arguing that the "clarification" is itself a form of violence.
Shakespearean tragedy follows a different structural logic:
| Stage | Feature | Example in Othello |
|---|---|---|
| Protagonist established | A figure of high status, eloquence, and public admiration | Othello's Senate speech (1.3) establishes his nobility and rhetorical power |
| Hamartia or external evil | A flaw in the protagonist's character, an error of judgement, or an external force that initiates the catastrophe | Iago's malice; Othello's susceptibility to jealousy |
| Peripeteia | A reversal of fortune — the protagonist's situation worsens | 3.3 — the temptation scene; Othello's transformation |
| Anagnorisis | Recognition — the protagonist understands what has happened, often too late | "Of one that loved not wisely but too well" (5.2.354) |
| Catastrophe | Death, destruction, the collapse of the world the play established | Desdemona's murder, Emilia's murder, Othello's suicide |
In tragedy, love is not a source of social renewal (as in comedy) but a source of destruction. The tragic protagonist's love is too intense, too absolute, too invested in the beloved — and when that love is threatened (or seems to be), the result is catastrophic:
"Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well;
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme." (Othello, 5.2.353–56)
Othello's self-epitaph insists on the sincerity and depth of his love even as it acknowledges the destruction that love has caused. Whether this speech is genuinely self-aware or a final act of self-dramatisation is a question that divides critics.
AO5 — Critical Interpretations: A.C. Bradley argues that the greatness of Shakespearean tragedy lies in the waste of human potential — that the destruction of Othello is terrible precisely because of what he could have been. Jan Kott reads tragedy as the working-out of an impersonal mechanism of power, in which individual characters are crushed by forces they cannot control.
The Winter's Tale belongs to the group of plays written late in Shakespeare's career (c.1608–11) that critics call the romances or late plays. These plays share distinctive features:
| Feature | Explanation | Example in The Winter's Tale |
|---|---|---|
| Loss and restoration | Something precious is lost and recovered, but not unchanged | Perdita lost as a baby, found as a young woman; Hermione "dead" for sixteen years, then restored |
| The passage of time | A long gap separates loss from recovery — time heals but also costs | The sixteen-year gap (bridged by Time as Chorus in 4.1) |
| Nature and renewal | The natural world (pastoral landscapes, seasonal imagery) represents regeneration | The sheep-shearing festival in Bohemia (4.4) |
| Art and nature | The plays reflect on the relationship between art and nature, illusion and reality | The statue scene (5.3) — is Hermione's return art or nature, magic or reality? |
| Qualified resolution | The ending is hopeful but acknowledges what has been lost — joy is always shadowed by grief | Mamillius is dead; the sixteen lost years cannot be recovered; Hermione's wrinkled face marks the cost of Leontes' jealousy |
Romance treats love differently from both comedy and tragedy:
The statue scene (5.3) is the culmination of this vision. Hermione's "resurrection" — whether magical or natural — represents the possibility that love, damaged by jealousy and separated by time, can be restored. But Hermione's wrinkled face is evidence of the sixteen years she has lost; Mamillius is still dead; the joy of reunion coexists with the grief of irreversible loss.
"O, she's warm!
If this be magic, let it be an art
Lawful as eating." (The Winter's Tale, 5.3.109–11)
Leontes' response — wonder, relief, the comparison of the miraculous to the everyday ("lawful as eating") — is one of Shakespeare's most moving moments. It works precisely because the play has taken us through the full horror of jealousy's consequences before offering this qualified, imperfect redemption.
Measure for Measure is generically unstable — and this instability is central to its treatment of love.
The play has a comic structure: it ends in marriages and nobody dies. But the marriages are coerced or compromised:
| Marriage | Circumstances |
|---|---|
| Angelo and Mariana | Angelo is forced to marry Mariana as punishment; she wants him, but he has betrayed and abandoned her |
| Claudio and Juliet | Their pre-contract is legalised — but Claudio has been sentenced to death and nearly executed |
| Lucio and Kate Keepdown | Lucio is forced to marry a prostitute he has got pregnant — he considers it a punishment worse than death |
| The Duke and Isabella | The Duke proposes; Isabella does not reply; the play ends in silence |
None of these marriages looks like a happy ending. The play uses the comic form — marriage as resolution — while exposing the coercion and compromise that underlie the convention.
AO5 — Critical Interpretations: Jonathan Dollimore reads Measure for Measure as a play that exposes the mechanisms of state power, arguing that the Duke is not a benevolent figure but a manipulative ruler who uses marriage as a tool of social control. Alexander Leggatt suggests that the play's refusal to provide a satisfying comic resolution is its most honest and radical quality.
Understanding genre gives you analytical tools for Paper 1 Section A:
Consider what genre does to the meaning of love at the moment of greatest loss. In tragedy, Othello's final account of himself insists on love even in self-condemnation:
"Of one that loved not wisely but too well" (Othello, 5.2.354)
The tragic frame gives this line its weight: there is no second chance, no restoration, no green world to retreat to. The love it describes has already produced an irreversible catastrophe — Desdemona is dead — and the genre forecloses any possibility of repair. "Too well" is the tragic excess, the hamartia of intensity itself, and the past tense ("loved") seals it as finished. Now imagine the same sentiment — a love that erred through excess — placed in the romance frame of The Winter's Tale. There, Leontes' comparable excess of (jealous) feeling destroys his family, but the genre grants what tragedy refuses: time, and a qualified return. When Hermione's statue moves, Leontes' wonder — "O, she's warm!" (5.3.109) — is only possible because romance permits restoration after loss. The two lines describe structurally similar failures of love, but genre determines whether the failure ends in a corpse or in a warm hand. This is why examiners prize genre analysis: it is the clearest demonstration that structure makes meaning. A candidate who can show that the same kind of love-failure yields death in tragedy and renewal in romance has grasped AO2 at the level the top band requires.
Note, too, how Measure for Measure refuses to honour either promise. It has the shape of comedy — it ends in marriages, nobody dies — yet the marriages are coerced and the play withholds the festive release comedy conventionally delivers. Isabella's unanswered silence at the Duke's proposal is the formal sign of a genre that has been emptied of its consolations. The "problem play" is precisely a play in which the generic promise is invoked and then broken.
Exam Tip: Whenever you analyse a moment of love, loss, or reunion, ask what the genre allows. The same event is a different event in a different genre. Naming the generic frame, and showing what it permits or forbids, is a high-level AO2 move that very few candidates make.
The late plays are fascinating because they change genre mid-course, and Shakespeare marks the transitions with deliberate structural devices. Recognising these "hinges" is a sophisticated AO2 skill.
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