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The four men debate a series of three topics: (1) the relative merit of classical drama (upheld by Crites) vs. modern drama (championed by Eugenius); (2) whether French drama, as Lisideius maintains, is better than English drama (supported by Neander, who famously calls Shakespeare "the greatest soul, ancient or modern"); and (3) whether plays ...
sarcasm is an insincere form of politeness which is used to offend one's interlocutor. [9] Linguist John Haiman writes: "There is an extremely close connection between sarcasm and irony, and literary theorists in particular often treat sarcasm as simply the crudest and least interesting form of irony." Also, he adds:
Shakespeare's writing features extensive wordplay of double entendres and clever rhetorical flourishes. [27] Humour is a key element in all of Shakespeare's plays. His works have been considered controversial through the centuries for his use of bawdy punning, [28] to the extent that "virtually every play is shot through with sexual puns."
Metaphysical poetry as a style was prevalent in the time of English playwright William Shakespeare, who admonished pretension with the phrase "Better a witty fool than a foolish wit". [3] It may combine word play with conceptual thinking, as a kind of verbal display requiring attention, without intending to be laugh-out-loud funny. Indeed wit ...
Innuendo in British humour is evident in the literature as far back as Beowulf and Chaucer, and it is a prevalent theme in many British folk songs. Shakespeare often used innuendo in his comedies, but it is also often found in his other plays. [6] One example in Hamlet act 4 scene v reads:
In this he differed from Johnson, who thought Shakespeare best at comedy. The greatest of the plays were tragedies—particularly Macbeth, Othello, King Lear, and Hamlet—and Hazlitt's comments on tragedy are often integrated with his ideas about the significance of poetry and imaginative literature in general. [24]
Sonnet 130 satirizes the concept of ideal beauty that was a convention of literature and art in general during the Elizabethan era. Influences originating with the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome had established a tradition of this, which continued in Europe's customs of courtly love and in courtly poetry, and the work of poets such as Petrarch.
Sarcasm is especially useful in controversial debates, the more controversial the better, where a sarcastic comment often has the effect of calming the situation. Don't worry about offending people; simply appending a smiley emoticon , humorous XML tag ( </sarcasm> ), or irony mark ( βΈ® ) to your comment will assuage any hurt feelings (Don't ...