Shakespeare's Tragedy & Comedy Share One Dark Truth #shakespeare #theatre #shorts

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]What might these two plays possibly have in common? What is the crossover point?

[00:00:04]One is a tragedy, maybe an what maybe the archetypal tragedy in Shakespeare.

[00:00:10]The other is a, you know, boisterous, uplifting, um joyous comedy. So, I was mulling over it for a while.

[00:00:20]Um hanging out with my friend Jack Daniels, and uh and I had a kind of epiphany. I realized the one thing that these two plays have in common is that in both plays in each play the leading lady asks the leading man to kill somebody.

[00:00:38]And that seemed very curious to me. Now, that makes sense in the context of Macbeth, the Scottish play. But when you think about it in the context of Much Ado About Nothing, it seems very strange indeed.

[00:00:51]And so, I'm going to speak uh I'm going to kind of half read or so just to track my thoughts here about um that unusual circumstance.

[00:01:02]And what that reveals to us about tragedy, about comedy, about Shakespeare, maybe about ourselves. So, I do want to thank you for letting me be here.