Ed Ranks Shakespeare's Comedies

The bard. Bard. Bard is the word.

Shakespeare! This was a guy who wrote things. Overall, he wrote 39-ish plays. Or maybe 37, depending on how to feel about mutual authorship of two of those, of which is contribution is lesser. Or even fewer than that, if you believe a number of the others are collaborations and he shouldn't get full credit. Or maybe zero, if you believe Shakespeare was just an actor who didn't write anything and Edward de Vere wrote it all. Whatever. I'm going to go with 37.

That will add up to 15 comedies, 10 histories, and 12 tragedies. I'm breaking this into three parts, based on those categories, because I can.

These are his comedies, ranked. Note that I'm excluding from this ranking The Two Noble Kinsmen, because (a) it was not in the First Folio, and (b) the primary author is likely John Fletcher, with ol' Shakes as a contributor to less than half. I will, however, include Pericles, Prince of Tyre, despite some similar authorship concerns and the fact that it wasn't in the First Folio. Why? Because most others include it and it appears in far more editions of Shakespeare's collected works than the other. I'm not making the rules here, I'm just following the lead of others.

15. The Two Gentlemen of Verona

One of Shakespeare's earliest plays, it's also a hot bog fire of awful, and is overall one of his worst plays among all three categories. It's a story about two friends who fall in love with the same girl, and then the girl is a cross-dresser. Or something like that. The best character in the play is a dog.

14. Pericles, Prince of Tyre

As mentioned above, some people argue if this one should even be included. It wasn't in the First Folio, and modern analysis of writing styles concludes that Shakespeare only wrote the second half. If I excluded it, you wouldn't be missing much. They story features at least two shipwrecks (yeah, fuck you The Tempest!), some father-daughter incest, death in childbirth, throwing a dead wife into a sea, and then a 16-year plot jump where the daughter grows up only to get kidnapped by pirates and sold as a sex slave. Does this sound like a comedy? Well, it is. Because it features some writing that un-does the terrible things which happened (the wife didn't actually die in childbirth at all, etc.) You know, the kind of thing that would make Annie Wilkes furious.

Oh Falstaff, you sexy beast you.

13. The Merry Wives of Windsor

Do you know how TV shows like to do spinoffs? Of course you do! Well, The Merry Wives of Windsor is the Baywatch Nights of Shakespeare plays. The Henry IV plays (especially the first part) are among the better of Shakespeare's Histories, and featured a supporting character named Falstaff (who, as previously established, is basically just Zach Galifianakis).  In this new play, Falstaff is promoted to the role of main character, and pretends to be interested in two wealthy married ladies so that he can steal money from them. However, both of the ladies are smart enough to realize his plot, and so they really just toy around and humiliate him for fun.

12. All's Well That Ends Well

This is the play that teaches you that if you stalk someone enough, they will eventually fall in love with you. The main character is Helena, who spends the entire play Single White Female-ing a guy named Bertram, who is totally not into her at all. Fortunately for her, she is a healer and she heals a dying king. The king grants her a wish - and she wishes to marry Bertram! But kings can only, like, legally make marriages happen. They're not genies, so while he grants the wish and marries them, Bertram still doesn't love Helena at all. In fact, he dislikes her so much that he leaves the country and tries to fuck a bunch of virgin girls in Italy. Helena, still obsessed, follows him to Italy, swaps places with one of  the virgins so that he will have sex with her instead, then gets all dramatic and fakes her death. When she reveals that she's alive again, Bertram is apparently so impressed by all the crazy effort (emphasis on crazy) that Helena went through for him, that he just accepts that he'll never escape her and swears his love to her. Fun?

11. The Taming of the Shrew

This is a strange, peculiar adaption of 10 Things I Hate About You, except set in 16th century Italy, rather than in an American high school in 1999 with Julia Styles (as originally intended by Shakespeare). Seriously. That's the plot, so just go watch that.

They spelled "labor" wrong.

10. Love's Labour's Lost

Remember the Seinfeld episode where they held the contest to figure out who could go the longest without masturbating? Well, this is also a Shakespeare plot, basically, but with actual sex. The King of Navarre and his three bros all make a pact to not bang any girls for three years for... reasons. Unfortunately for them, like the day after they start that pact, the smoking hot Princess of France and her equally smoking hot three lady attendants all show up. Basically, they all attempt to break their pact and score, each picking the girl that they wanted like they were picking their favorite Spice Girl. Posh, by the way. In case you wanted to know mine.


9. The Comedy of Errors

When this phrase doesn't refer to the fielding of the Pittsburgh Pirates, it refers to a Shakespeare play that is famous for being the shortest and most farcical. It's full of puns and slapstick humor. Most Shakespeare plays that call themselves "comedies" aren't actually that funny. This one at least attempts to be. It's about two identical twins that are seperated at birth, but then meet again - leading to all sorts of wacky nonsense, I suppose. If being beaten, arrested, and accused of infidelity are wacky nonsense. Which they are, of course.

8. Measure for Measure

Surprisingly not the subtitle of an Are You Being Served? spinoff, this is instead the story about the Duke of Vienna, who pretends to leave the city. But really, he simply puts on a disguise and pretends to be a friar, so that he can be a nosy little bitch and spy on everyone and see how the kingdom is being run without him. Terribly, is the answer, especially as is #2 left in charge is a corrupt douche named Angelo. It also features a brothel madame named "Mistress Overdone," which is surely enough to allow it to be ranked at #8 for that reason alone, even if the rest of the play is awful.

Also starring: This bear.

7. The Winter's Tale

Oh boy, this one is a doozy. The King of Sicily and the King of Bohemia are like BFFs ever since they were kids. The King of Bohemia comes to visit Sicily and they have a great time. Then the King of Bohemia says he has to go home to run his kingdom, but the King of Sicily is having so much fun that he doesn't want him to leave. Bohemia says "Nah, gotta go," and so Sicily asks his wife to help intervene and convince Bohemia to stay. And she does exactly that. Then, for no fucking logical reason at all, Sicily is angry that his wife got Bohemia to stay, even though that's exactly what he asked her to do. So he accuses her of having an affair with him (she's pregnant, by the way), banishes the child when it's born, and is such a dick that his wife dies (or appears to). Cut to years later, the child is grown up into a beautiful girl who just happens to fall in love with Bohemia's son. He does not approve. They run off together, yada yada yada, the wife didn't really die after all, everyone gets along in the end so that it can be a "comedy."

6. The Merchant of Venice

Prepare for racism!!! Shylock is a miserly (okay, cheap, there is nothing wrong with that), Jewish (uh-oh) money lender (yikes, this sounds like it could easily devolve into stereotypes) that is portrayed as the primary antagonist (of course he is) to Antonio. Why is Shylock such a villain? Fuck if I know. Antonio is a violent antisemite who has previously insulted, mocked and physically assaulted Shylock. Yet Shylock still lends him money that Antonio refuses to pay back. Shylock's interest rate is a pound of Antonio's flesh, which is quite frankly an awesome thing to charge an antisemitic asshole. And fuck Antonio because he obviously signed up for this interest rate in the first place, so he has nobody to blame but himself. Shylock takes Antonio to court, but this bitch named Portia makes bullshit arguments so that he not only loses the case, but is forced to GIVE UP ALL OF HIS WEALTH FOR BEING A JEW, AND IS ALSO FORCED TO CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY. Holy shit! This is just awful. I hope that the Jigsaw Killer finds this Portia lady and locks her up in a warehouse.

Is that Denzel or Chef!?

5. Much Ado About Nothing

A charming tale about two sets of lovers - Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson, along with that Dr. Wilson from House and a very jailbait-looking Kate Beckinsale. It's all about their zany romances, mixed with tales of infidelity, cuckoldry, deception, masked balls, Michael Keaton, Keanu Reeves, and Denzel Washington. Okay, I'll admit it. I've never actually read this thing, I just saw the 1993 adaption. Get off my case. I've barely read any of these, beyond what I was assigned in school.

4. A Midsummer Night's Dream

Another one I haven't actually read, but I did see the play in London at the Globe Theater. That's pretty cool, right? This is the one that's all about spirits and fairies and sprites and love spells. It also features Puck, who would go on to star in MTV's The Real World.  Do I really have to explain this one in detail? It's one of the more famous ones. I'm pretty sure this is the most commonly done Shakespeare production. I'm not quite sure why, as it's not the best Shakespeare play, nor even the best comedy. Still, people really, really like doing productions of this play. I guess fairies are just super popular.

3. As You Like It

Probably most famous for it's quotable quotes like, "All the world's a stage" (so meta, Shakespeare), this is the one that's about the girl Rosalind, who runs away from her evil duke uncle (fuck Duke!) to join her father (the rightful duke, who was usurped) in the woods. There, she cross-dresses and takes up a new identity (a disturbingly common fetish in Shakespeare's comedies), falls in love with a guy named Orlando, and is eventually able to right all the wrongs by making the evil duke change his ways and restore her father to his rightful place. Despite her main-character status, Rosalind herself takes a back seat in cultural memory to the scene-stealing Jaques, who is an emo guy who gets all the best lines (yes, including "All the world's a stage). 

2. The Tempest

Definitely one that I was required to read in school. Maybe you did too. Tell me if this one rings a bell. Duke Prospero and his daughter Miranda are exiled by the usurper Antonio to an island, along with Prospero's magical occultist books (you'd think Antonio would take away the magical books before exiling him, but whatever). They enslave a savage named Caliban and a sprite named Ariel (more fairies, yay!), and also shipwreck random people who pass by... because why not?  Just kidding, it's not random people. The ship they wreck just happens to be the ship of Antonio, the very man who usurped Propsero's title. Because it's a comedy, rather than murdering Antonio and his crew to eat their flash (as would really happen), Miranda falls in love with a prince who was also on the ship, and eventually everyone reconciles and live happily ever after. Everyone except Caliban, who remains a slave. Which is pretty fucked up.

Characters that will probably have sex.

1. Twelfth Night

Twelfth Night is Shakespeare's best comedy (but really only his sixth best play, since his top five are all tragedies, according to my rankings). What's so funny? Well, nothing really. I wouldn't call any of Shakespeare's comedies as particularly "ha ha" funny according to today's definitions. "Comedy" just means "the main characters don't die horribly at the end." This one is about separated twins (again), Viola and Sebastian, cross-dressing (again), some stupid Duke (again) named Orsino, and unrequited love that borders on stalking (again). Orsino loves a woman named Lady Olivia, who is totally not into him, and employs cross-dressing Viola to woo Olivia, but since Olivia things Viola is a dude she falls in love with her instead. Simultaneously, Viola has got the hots for the Duke. Here is where the actual play and any porn parody diverge, because instead of a hot lesbian scene followed by a threesome, the plot grows more confusing as Viola's long lost twin brother Sebastian shows up (a guy version of Viola, thus confusing Olivia further into thinking Sebastian is Viola). It's all sorted out when Olivia marries Sebastian and Orsino decides that Viola is pretty hot herself, and reciprocates the crush. But seriously. For Shakespeare plots that could easily be adapted into cheesy porno, this has to be the top. What would it be called though? Twelfth in a Night? Twelfth and Tight? I dunno. This one has a lot of supporting characters and subplots with other suitor characters to Lady Olivia that can also be worked in. Whoever is cast as Lady Olivia is definitely going to wind up banging twelve different characters in one night. That's for damn sure.

Next up? The History plays! Spoiler alert: most of these are mediocre. Especially if they do not contain a "Henry" smaller than V or the word "Richard."