SOURCE: Schwartz, Elias. “Twelfth Night and the Meaning of Shakespearean Comedy.” College English 28, no. 7 (April 1967): 508-19.

In the following essay, Schwartz presents Twelfth Night as an example of “festive” comedy, in which the atmosphere of merriment expresses a vision of human life that focuses on life's joy, not its limitations. Schwartz additionally contrasts festive comedy with satiric comedy, emphasizing that the play should not be viewed as satire.

Although Aristotle does not take up the nature of comedy in the Poetics, he does throw out a few remarks which are as intelligent and useful as anything that has been said on the subject. Comedy, he says, differs from tragedy in imitating men worse, rather than better, than we are. And he defines the laughable as a species of ugliness: “a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others.” We may derive from these remarks a...