The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [83]
The first is that any characters who have become dark because they are imprisoned in some hard, divisive, unloving state - anger, greed, jealousy, shrewishness, disloyalty, self-righteousness or whatever - must be softened and liberated by some act of self-recognition and a change of heart. They must in effect become a `new' or different person (`come to themselves') and if they do not change in this way, the only alternative, as we shall shortly see, is that they shall at least be shown up and paid out, by punishment or general derision, so they can no longer cause harm to others.
Secondly it may be necessary for the identity of one or more characters to be revealed in a more literal sense. They are discovered to be someone other than had been supposed.
Thirdly, where relevant, the characters must discover who they are meant to pair off with, their true `other half', since until this is established they seem lost and incomplete. Recognition of their `other half' thus becomes an essential part of discovering their own complete identity.
Finally and in general, wherever there is division, separation or loss, it shall be repaired. Families shall be reunited, lost objects found, usurped kingdoms reestablished. Whatever is out of place or sick must be restored.
The `change from ignorance to knowledge' thus becomes in each case a transition from division to wholeness, from darkness to light, and we can set out the `before' and `after' states of the four ingredients in Comedy like this:
In other words, for love and reconciliation to triumph, it must be discovered who all the characters really are and how they fit harmoniously together. The confusion which precedes this `recognition' can thus be seen as a kind of twilight, marked by the fact that people are insufficiently aware of each other's and their own true identity: which is why such a conspicuous feature of Comedy is the obscuring of identities, not just through ignorance of birth, but through the whole repertoire of such devices as disguises, impersonations and characters being mistaken for each other.
The one thing of which we can be certain in a Comedy is that the happy ending cannot be reached until everyone has emerged into the full light of day, all disguises are thrown off and the characters no longer seem to be anything other than what they are. In the remainder of Shakespeare's comedies we see him developing this element in the plot in a particularly revealing way.
The obscured heroine
A measure of just how richly Shakespeare developed the Comedy plot is to contrast his comedies with those of his contemporary Ben Jonson. Whereas the joy of a Shakespearean Comedy is to show a group of people all being finally lifted up into the light, as the powers of darkness in the story are dispelled, Jonson's plays derive their humour from concentrating far more obviously just on the devilry of the dark figures. In Volpone, a rich, elderly Venetian conspires with his confederate Mosca to trick a series of gullible fools by pretending that he is on his death bed. Each of the victims is persuaded to think he may be the chosen heir to Volpone's fortune, and therefore tries to ingratiate himself with the old rogue by giving him a present. Volpone then enjoys discomfiting them by announcing that he has made over all his estate to Mosca instead. But Mosca