SOURCE: McDonald, Russ. “Fear of Farce.” In “Bad” Shakespeare: Revaluations of the Shakespearean Canon, edited by Maurice Charney, pp. 77-90. Rutherford, N.J.: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988.

In the essay that follows, McDonald uses his examination of The Comedy of Errors to highlight Shakespeare's effort to construct meaning in farce and to demonstrate Shakespeare's affinity for this genre.

Zeus's sexual lapses notwithstanding, gods are not supposed to be indecorous, and a characteristic of modern Bardolatry has been its insistence on Shakespeare's artistic dignity, particularly his attachment to the approved dramatic forms. The popular image of Shakespeare as the embodiment of high culture, the author of Hamlet and certain other tragedies, as well as a very few weighty comedies, is merely a version of a bias that also, if less obviously, afflicts the academy. What I am talking about is a hierarchy of modes, or, to put it another...