ABSTRACT
Shakespeare’s romantic comedies are shot through with such ambivalence; the felicity in love finally achieved has sharp qualifiers in the preceding actions. They are love comedies in a double sense; because the lovers pass through difficulties to happy unions but also because love and lovers are frequently subjects of mirth. Furthermore, love is often presented as a painful and disturbing passion. The comedies generally, apart from the numerous direct strictures which add to the effect even if qualified by context, provide in their actions a perpetual commentary on the follies, errors, and trials incident to sexual love. Their dramatic life is largely the sum of the tensions and laughter precipitated by the vagaries of love. The militance of the initial skirmishes of Beatrice and Benedick is comic because, whatever each thinks of his or her prowess in insult, we recognise it as a mechanism of defence to mask an underlying attraction.
