The U.S. government reaction to the Enron Scandal Research Paper

The U.S. government reaction to the Enron Scandal - Research Paper Example This paper focuses on response made by the government as a result of Enron scandal. The chaos caused economic losses to it stockholders and people have lost trust to the financial community. It has rendered the Code of Conduct and Ethics an insubstantial piece of covenant that could be disobeyed by seniors when they chose to do so. This paper used published literatures and materials in order to review government’s reaction on the said scandal so that risks of same incident are apprehended. An aftermath of the investigation showed perpetrators of the crime were persecuted, and the creation of a legislative Act that offered strict regulations and changes on the financial reporting. Enron was the 7th biggest corporation in the United States in 2001. It was founded in1985 and was involved in electricity, natural gas, communications and paper companies. The collapse of Enron in 2001 created ripple effects to its investors, its creditors, banks, employees, and the government. It has shattered the confidence of people to the financial markets and brought financial losses to its stakeholders, unemployment, and closure of two giant corporations, the Enron, and Arthur Anderson (AA). AA was also one of the largest accountancy and auditing firms in the world, and was the auditing firm of Enron. A long period of time has passed since then, and it is the duty of the government to take action on this big financial mess. Focus of this paper is to know what have been the reactions of the U.S. government toward this. Methodology Qualitative research using secondary sources of information, published articles, and journals will be used to establish information required. Knowing what the government has done to give justice to the people who lost money and employment will rebuild its trust to the financial system. Background Enron was the 7th biggest corporation in the United States in 2001. It was founded in1985 and was involved in electricity, natural gas, communications an d paper companies, but was better known for its matchless style of business operation of futures trading of gas and electricity and creation of new unusual markets of commodities as broadcast time for advertisers, internet bandwidth, and weather futures. From a $9 billion revenue in 1995, its annual revenues rose to over $100 billion in 2001. So, the world was shocked to find out that it has filed for bankruptcy in the mid -2001. What was unknown to the public before the bankruptcy was that Enron’s reported financial condition was covered with systematic, organized and planned activities to cover up the losses of Enron. The drop of Enron’s stock price from $90 per share in the mid-2000 to less than $1 per share at the end of 2001 caused 11 billion dollars of losses to shareholders (Yuhao Li, 2010). Findings and discussions a. Violations of Ethical Practices Causes of bankruptcy in Enron is a tangled web of unethical practices committed by the Auditor, senior management , laxity of government rules, investment houses, banks and board of directors, stock analysts who kept on pushing Enron’s stocks and media frenzy.(Tesfatsion, L. 2011) Causes of bankruptcy is also deeply seated on breaking the rules of The Code of Conduct and Ethics wherein truthfulness was not followed by management by not announcing the true health of the company and conflict of interest. There was conflict of interest between the role of Andersen as Auditor and as a Consultant for Enron. The report of accounting irregularities on reports of Enron, and the admission of AA’s employees tearing of documents and evidences related to Enron’s involvement had totally eroded AA’s reputation and the quality of his audits on the Accountancy field were put to doubt by his clients. As an Auditor and Consultant of Enron, AA has the duty to inform the shareholders the correct information as the report influences economic benefits for its shareholders. But in this ins tance, Anderson chose to betray the stockholders for his best

Mathematics Autobiography Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Mathematics Autobiography - Essay Example In my entire course, my grades were good enough to further my study since my improvement was notable. My interest in mathematics started after my first pre-calculus class. My professors led me to discover the mystery of math and showed me the significance of mathematics in the scientific world. Presently, as a math major student in Seattle University, I am focused to get a better grade. This will help me get a higher-level education of mathematics in the future. My future plans and my personal expectations in mathematics is to get into a graduate school and major in statistics. From my researched understanding, statistics is a study that involves mathematical calculations and data analysis. This helps predict the future and determine what happened in the past. A program which works with numbers and data is challenging hence will improve my cognitive understanding and make my life more wonderful. The most attractive thing about mathematics in my life is studying with numbers. I can solve problems using different approaches and prove my answers with numbers. I consider it more interesting when I solve problems using numbers instead of using words. To me, using of Reserve proof to prove a mathematics problem is like a magic. However, not every aspect of mathematics interests me. For instance, understanding of theorem and definitions, as presented in publications has always been a problem to me. Reading is the hardest part in my life, so I still need to work hard with the definitions. Calculus II, integral, and Differential Equation are the most interesting units that I have taken in my entire course. I like integral and it interests me to integrate a hard question and finally figure out the answer. After taking Differential Equation class, I learned how to integrate an equation and restore it back to its previous state. I am taking math 310 as a major requirement and the same unit is a basic class for my higher-level math classes. Proving, which is a

Fraudulent Financial Reporting and Ethics at WorldCom Case Study

Fraudulent Financial Reporting and Ethics at WorldCom - Case Study Example As a result, the company incurred very substantial losses. These enormous losses meant that the business could not attain standards set by stock exchange analysts (Kaplan, Robert, and Kiron, 2004). WorldCom decided to hide these losses and buy time so that they could pay their expenses later. WorldCom’s senior management resorted to fraudulent practices to conceal these losses. The company agreed to have intentionally misappropriated over $3.8 billion. This amount was a line cost liability, but it was reported as a long-term capital investment. Line costs are funds that WorldCom paid to other telecommunication companies to lease their communication networks. Line costs were supposed to be as current liabilities in WorldCom’s profit and loss account. In 2001, $ 3.055 billion was said to have been wrongly assigned by the company. A sum of $797 million is supposed to have been allocated in 2002. WorldCom claimed that $14.7 billion was reported as line cost during the year of 2001 (Kaplan, Robert, and Kiron, 2004). Having allocated the expense as a capital investment, WorldCom increased its net annual income. This is because the line cost, a current liability, was inaccurately reduced. Following this, there were increments in the company assets since capital costs are considered investments. On 8th August 2012, WorldCom to have used its financial reserves wrongfully. Reports revealed that WorldCom used funds in reserve accounts to pay line expenses. Reserve accounts hold precautionary money for companies to use in case of an unforeseen event. The United States Stock Exchange Commission requested WorldCom to avail financial reports suspected to be.  

A Modest Proposal for holding Fathers Equally Essay Example for Free

A Modest Proposal for holding Fathers Equally Essay Traditionally, the concept of abortion, child-rearing, home management, prostitution and even pornography are all attributed to women – women as subject. In the issue of abortion, women are more likely judged as immoral or not good parent for either aborting or not aborting her child (for certain reasons). In Child-rearing, the mothers are the very ones who are blamed if it happened that her children grew rebellious and defiant. Home management is in all likelihood tagged as women’s function. In the issues of prostitution and pornography, women are the central subjects for judgment. They are more seen as immoral as compared to how men are treated. In short, there are still unresolved problems regarding gender roles and gender biased structure of society. This essay addresses the issue of making fathers or men also accountable for the occurrence of such societal conflicts. Traditional Gender Roles By tracing our history, we could arrive at an evaluation that women and the mothers were discriminated in the society. Having a patriarchal structure of society wherein men or the fathers are labeled as superior over women or the mothers. The traditional structure inside the house was that the father was regarded as the head of the house whom has the highest authority. He has the final say in all things concerning the family. His well-established role as father was providing the needs of the family. Consequently, given such structure inside the home, the community and even the whole society became attached to that particular belief that only men or the fathers have the right to be the head or the bearer of the highest authority otherwise conflict would arise. Because of this traditional conception women and mothers were viewed as the destroyers of order and peace in the society if they would insist themselves as equal as or higher than men and the fathers. Recommendation According to Katha Pollit, the fathers should also be accountable for all the conflicts that arise inside the house, in the community, and in the society. (Barnet Bedau, 2004) They (the fathers) are not really attributed with perfect characteristics. They have also the predisposition of doing wrong things just like the mothers. When the marriage relationship failed, the mother should not the only one whom should be blamed. The father has also part in that failed relationship. When a child grew up as disobedient and rebellious, the mother is not the only one who is responsible for disciplining her child. The father, being also a parent of his child, has the responsibility of disciplining and molding his child’s attitude. In the case of abortion, mothers are not the only persons who make the problem. The father has also a responsibility towards the pregnancy of the mother. In this contemporary period, women are asserting and fighting for their equal rights with men. They are consistent with their campaign of establishing laws that would make them equal with men. In cases of parenting and marriage relationship, it is really unintelligible to say that only women have this responsibility of taking care and disciplining the children and working out their marriage life. The father has also such responsibilities toward his children and his wife. As a conclusion, all must be enlightened with the fact that everyone has a responsibility towards each other and towards the society. Men and the fathers are not exempted from this kind of responsibility. Women or the mothers cannot manage the home without the assistance and aid of her partner, the father or her husband. Both of them are responsible for molding and guiding their children. And truly, it takes two to tango. Reference: Barnet, S. , Bedau, H. (2004). Current Issues and Enduring Questions (7th student ed. ). Bedford/St. Martins.

The Hindu Temples Architecture And Style Theology Religion Essay

The Hindu Temples Architecture And Style Theology Religion Essay The temples in India have always taken an important place in their cultural and spiritual life of its people, from the early times and till nowadays. In fact the whole cultural and spiritual life of Indian people is built around the temple. The overall purpose of the Hindu temple can be presented in such a way: like the Himalayas, the temple points to the heavens, the abode of the gods. The Hindu temple, step by step, shape-by-shape reverses this primeval descent and places man back on the path toward heaven. Temples were usually built in places marked by special holiness.  The legends associated them with the acts of Vishnu, Shiva, Durga and other gods.  In the 4-5 centuries, when Hinduism during the reign of Gupta dynasty, became the state religion, the main structural elements of the temples were plinth, sanctuary and superstructure.  The stone base of a Hindu temple symbolized the altar, on which the temple itself was sacrificed to a deity.  With the modular characteristics of the proportions of the temple measure cap not taken into account.  The temple was conceived as a structural unit, resting on the altar.   In some early temples the wall of the sanctuary served as main walls of the building, in others the sanctuary was surrounded by a second ring of walls, which created a special gallery to circumvent.  In any case, the churches were dark inside.   Module for Hindu temples and their center was a sculpture of a deity his idol.  Temple priests were called guardians of the idol and the servants of God, whose dwelling was in the temple. Modern scientific analysis of a temple shows that temple-space is surcharged with great positive energy and the visitors can feel physical welfare and mental well-being. This fact rises a lot of questions: how could a structure built of stone or of brick have that kind of energy? What makes the temple so powerful? There is a scientific view that a temple is not a home of God but it is the form of God that means that the temple structure itself is worthy of worship . (Michell , p. 68.) The temple architecture is a scientific phenomenon. The basic concept that determines worthiness of the structure and form of temple is The layout adopted for temple form is synonymous with the layout of the Cosmos. The plan of the layout of a temple is technically called Mandala or Vaastu Pada with a grid of 8x 8 =64 spaces or 9x 9 = 81 spaces of equal dimensions. In modern architectural terminology this can be addressed as energy-grid. Those two layouts are the geometrical formulae to replicate the subtle substance of the universe into visual material form. (Volwahsen, p 44) The important aspect of Hindu temple is that it serves as a cosmic intersection of man, God, and the Universe. But it also is the Universe, reflected in its repeating architectural forms. The careful mathematical measurements that lie in the basic construction of a Hindu temple express the structure of the Universe. For example, in order for the temple to face east, its width must be a perfect multiple of the fraction three-eighths. The outer dimensions of the temple must also satisfy five other equations relating to stars, planets and the passage of time. (Kramrisch, p.132) Another important analogy is between the temple and the mountain that can help to understand the divine purpose of the temple-to serve as a meeting place between man and the gods. It means that the gods could descend to be in the presence of man, like human souls rising up to meet the gods. (Rao, p. 126) The piece of land upon which the temple stands is itself a sacred location a tirtha, a Sanskrit word literally meaning crossing place is a site favored by the gods where water, shade and seclusion are plentiful. Temples must be built on tirthas in order to serve their true purpose as crossing places, and this site selection is only the first step in building a temple. Another important aspect is the vastu-purusa-mandala , that is a rough architectural blueprint for the foundation of the temple, that serves both a practical and a highly symbolic purpose, becoming the architectural and spiritual foundation of the Hindu temple. (Rao, p. 135.) As suggested earlier, the temple is also a microcosm of the Universe, the mandala reflects this aspect of the temple as well: the center square of the mandala stands for the mythical mountain of Meru, the geographic center of the cosmos. Around Mount Meru is arranged a symbolic pantheon of gods, and each god occupies its own square and is ranked in importance by its proximity to the center. (Rao, p. 135.) The next part of this essay analyzes separate elements of the temple, both interior and exterior, and places these elements within the context of the temples divine purpose: to serve as a cosmic meeting place for devotee and deity. The garbhagrha, the sanctum sanctorum of the Hindu temple, presents itself as a point of departure: if the temple is a mountain, the garbhagrha is the cave inside the mountain. The garbhagrha is dark, and its walls are largely undecorated, that contrasts the exterior of the temple, which is often highly ornate and replete with thousands of sculpted images. The simple darkness of the sanctum reflects its function as a womb house, one of the meanings of garbhagrha. (Kramrisch, p. 169) Analysis of Hindu temples in Nagara and Dravida styles The two temples described here, one at Khajuraho (Madhya Pradesh), the other at Angkor Wat, give the best possible idea of how the contrasting Nagara and Dravida styles had developed by the 11 century and present aesthetic achievements of the Hindu architectural tradition. Style Nagara, which developed during the 5h century, is characterized by a tower-type hive (called shikhara) made up of several words of architectural elements, such as kapotas and gavaksas, culminating in a large round cushion like element, named amalaka, and  parlance Drum.  The plan of the temple is based on the square, but the walls are often broken down decorative elements in creating the impression that the tower is round.  In more recent temples the central mandapa was surrounded by several small temple buildings, creating a visual effect of a fountain. From the 7th century Dravida , or southern style, has formed a pyramidal tower consisting of progressively diminishing tiers, bottleneck, and the dome on top, also called shikhara (in the southern terminology).  Repeated horizontal tiers visually impart the southern temples squat. Less obvious differences between the two main temple types Nagara and Dravida include the plan area, the selection and arrangement of stone, from which the cut shapes on the external walls and the interior, the range of decorative elements. In spite of their obvious stylistic differences, the temples at Khajuraho and Angkor Wat have basic principles connected with Hindu beliefs and practices. Kandariya Mahadeva temple, Khajuraho This temple was built in the middle of the 11th century by one of the kings of the Chandella dynasty, this great Shiva temple represents the Nagara style ad is one of the best achievements. Kandariya Mahadeva temple is the tallest monument at Khajuraho, its spire rising more than 30.5 metres above the plinth on which the temple is elevated. The temple has 30.5 metres in length and 20 metres in width. Like other fully developed Chandella temples at Khajuraho, it consists of a linear east-west sequence of access steps, entrance porch, columned hall with side balconies, and linga shrine with encircling passageway, off which open three additional balconies, that bring porches. The porches serve as balconies with high seating, bringing ventilation and light to the interior. What distinguishes the Kandariya Mahadeva temple from the other monuments a Khajuraho is its grand scale and elaboration of design and ornamentation. Undoubtedly, the glory of the temple is its lofty curving tower, crowned by an amalaka ( ribbed circular motif). Very significant in the temple is the sculptural treatment of its outer walls, which are covered with images of the god Shiva, to whom the monument is dedicated, with consorts, attendants and lesser divinities. Important among the images here are the aspect of the god, including those who subdues the blind demon, the cosmic dancer, and the destroyer of the triple demon cities. The sculptures are arranged in three tiers on the outside, amounting to no less than 646 figures in all, not counting the 226 figures of the interior. The temple is well known for its erotic groups which are placed on the juncture of the walls of the mandapa and the passageway surrounding the sanctuary, marking one of the most ritually vulnerable parts of the monument. Among the other images are those of female deities, such as the seven mothers, let alone the countless apsaras, or heavenly maidens that attend on the gods, and who are shown in alluring postures that reveal the mastery of the Khajuraho artists in rendering female contours with conscious sophistication and exuberant grace. Angkor Wat in Cambodia, is the second Hindu temple described in the paper, that refers to the Dravida style. This temple was dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu, the preserver of the world. Angkor Wat is a gigantic threeà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ step pyramid adorned by nine slender towers of enormous height, the steps of the pyramid are capped by galleries. Framed by an enclosure wall and a majestic moat, the temple covers 2.5 square kilometres. The pyramid is raised on a vast terrace of 2 m high, and surrounded by naga balustrades. It opens to the cardinal points by entrance pavilions and stairways. The steps are crowned by surrounding galleries: the first step, containing the gallery of the basreliefs, is 203 m large and 3 m high. Pavilions mark the corners, at the corners of the second tier are four towers, their superstructure is partly missing. The outer gallery of the pyramid, including the western corner pavilions, shelters the most precious treasures of Angkor Wat, reliefs in a total length of more than 600 m. They depict narrative scenes from mythology and history. Reliefs do not simply embellish a temple; they make it a sacred space. In the images which depict the gods and their deeds, the gods themselves are present, and figures and parts of the body are either shown frontally or in profile. Reliefs were always carved in situ, after the walls had been finished; they were cut into the stone. It is important to mention twelve stairways rise to the third level of the pyramid. All five towers open to the cardinal directions, giving open views along the galleries, and the overall picture was a wide and airy hall, full of light. The third level, where are the finest reliefs of Devata, was the throne room of God Vishnu. As for the symbolism of the temple, Angkor Wat is an unsurpassed image of the Mount Meru, the abode of the Gods in the centre of the world. Corresponding to the five peaks of this mountain, at Angkor Wat five towers were visible from every cardinal direction. The enclosure wall symbolizes the mountains surrounding and hiding the Mount Meru; the moat symbolizes the cosmic ocean. The temple complex is a microcosm, an image of a perfect world, stable and in geometrical harmony. We can see that Angkor Wat, as well as Kandariya Mahadeva temple, as all Hindu temples serves as a cosmic intersection of man, God, and the Universe, and also the Universe is reflected in its repeating architectural forms.

The Effect of Divorce on Children Essay examples -- Sociology Parentin

The Effect of Divorce on Children Works Cited Missing Divorce is always a traumatic experience in a person's life, especially a child's. When parents divorce, children are not always considered during the settlement. This omission can lead to problems with the child's perception of daily life. The impact divorce has on a family is more prominent to the children of the family than the parents. As a child, there are many situations that affect a view, memory, opinion, or attitude. Children have many of their own daily struggles to cope with, such as peer pressure. Adults sometimes forget what it is like to be a child dealing with some of the childhood pressures. Many parents do not realize how something like divorce could possibly affect their children as much as it does themselves. As the case may be, children are strongly affected by divorce. Some react differently than others, but all experience some kind of emotional change. Parents who are going through a divorce sometimes try to shield their children from the situation. But regardless of their parents good intentions, children often find themselves in an emotional catastrophe. Instead of protection from the situation, children need support and reassurance during this hard time. Parents feel like it is their job to protect their children from the same kinds of anguish and stress that they feel during the divorce. But ignoring this only leads to more unwanted stress. Parents should help their children better understand what changes will be taking place in the future, such as new places to live, new ways of communicating with their parents, and new schedules of daily life. There are many factors that affect a child's reaction to divorce. Their rea... ...ince fathers usually make more money and have more economic resources, if they were to get remarried, children in the new family would be better off because getting remarried usually results in higher incomes. It may not be possible to make every marriage a happy one or to always avoid divorce. Some spouses even have no choice when their mates leave them. But it's time to change all of this and lead these children to better adult lives. These children are the future and without them functioning correctly, the generations to come may also be affected in great ways. With a little more encouragement from our society, many of the same parents who would literally run in front of a speeding car to save their child from death might consider working harder at creating a better marriage to help our future generations (Betsy Hart: Time to Change the 'Divorce Debate').

Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy

Common Features of a Shakespeare Comedy What makes a Shakespeare comedy identifiable if the genre is not distinct from the Shakespeare tragedies and histories? This is an ongoing area of debate, but many believe that the comedies share certain characteristics, as described below: * Comedy through language: Shakespeare communicated his comedy through language and his comedy plays are peppered with clever word play, metaphors and insults. 1. Love: The theme of love is prevalent in every Shakespeare comedy.Often, we are presented with sets of lovers who, through the course of the play, overcome the obstacles in their relationship and unite. Love in Shakespearean comedy is stronger than the inertia of custom, the power of evil, or the fortunes of chance and time. In all of these plays but one (Troilus and Cressida), the obstacles presented to love are triumphantly overcome, as conflicts are resolved and errors forgiven in a general aura of reconciliation and marital bliss at the play's c lose.Such intransigent characters as Shylock, Malvolio, and Don John, who choose not to act out of love, cannot be accommodated in this scheme, and they are carefully isolated from the action before the climax. * * Complex plots: The plotline of a Shakespeare comedy contains more twists and turns than his tragedies and histories. Although the plots are complex, they do follow similar patterns. For example, the climax of the play always occurs in the third act and the final scene has a celebratory feel when the lovers finally declare their love for each other.Moreover, the context of marriage—at least alluded to, is the cap-stone of the comedic solution, for these plays not only delight and entertain, they affirm, guaranteeing the future. Marriage, with its promise of offspring, reinvigorates society and transcends the purely personal element in sexual attraction and romantic love. * Mistaken identities: The plot is often driven by mistaken identity. Sometimes this is an inten tional part of a villain’s plot, as in Much Ado About Nothing when Don John tricks Claudio into believing that his fiance has been unfaithful through mistaken identity.Characters also play scenes in disguise and it is not uncommon for female characters to disguise themselves as male characters, seen in Portia in the Merchant of venice. Shakespeare’s 17 comedies are the most difficult to classify because they overlap in style with other genres. Critics often describe some plays as tragi-comedies because they mix equal measures of tragedy and comedy. For example, Much Ado About Nothing starts as a Shakespeare comedy, but takes on the characteristics of a tragedy when Hero is disgraced and fakes her own death.At this point, the play has more in common with Romeo and Juliet, one of Shakespeare’s key tragedies. The 18 plays generally classified as comedy are as follows: 1 All's Well That Ends Well 2 As You Like It 3 The Comedy of Errors 4 Cymbeline 5 Love's Labourâ⠂¬â„¢s Lost 6 Measure for Measure 7 The Merry Wives of Windsor 8 The Merchant of Venice 9 A Midsummer Night's Dream 10 Much Ado About Nothing 11 Pericles, Prince of Tyre 12 The Taming of the Shrew 13 The Tempest 14 Troilus and Cressida 15 Twelfth Night 16 Two Gentlemen of Verona 7 The Two Noble Kinsmen 18 The Winter's Tale 2. 3. Comedy is a drama that provokes laughter at human behavior, usually involves romantic love, and usually has a happy ending. In Shakespeare's day the conventional comedy enacted the struggle of young lovers to surmount some difficulty, usually presented by their elders, and the play ended happily in marriage or the prospect of marriage. Sometimes the struggle was to bring separated lovers or family members together, and their reunion was the happy culmination (this often involved marriage also).Shakespeare generally observed these conventions, though his inventiveness within them yielded many variations. 4. Eighteen plays are generally included among Shakespe are's comedies. In approximate order of composition, they are. These works are often divided into distinct subclasses reflecting the playwright's development. The first seven, all written before about 1598, are loosely classed as the ‘early comedies', though they vary considerably in both quality and character.The last four of these—Loves Labour's Lost, the Dream, the Merchant, and the Merry Wives—are sometimes separated as a transitional group, or linked with the next three in a large ‘middle comedies' classification. The Merry Wives is somewhat anomalous in any case; it represents a type of comedy—the ‘city play', a speciality of suchwriters as Ben Jonson and Thomas Dekker—that Shakespeare did not otherwise write. The next three plays. Much Ado, As You Like It, and Twelfth Night, are often thought to constitute Shakespeare's greatest achievement in comedy; all written around 1599-1600, they are called the romantic, or mature, comedies. The next group of three plays, called the Problem Plays, which include Alls Well that Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, and Measure for Measure that were written in the first years of the 17th century, as Shakespeare was simultaneously creating his greatest tragedies. The final cluster, all written between about 1607 and 1613, make up the bulk of the playwright's final period. They are known as the Romances which include Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest, and often The Two Noble Kinsman. (The problem plays and romances were intended to merge Tragedy and comedy in Tragicomedies.Many minor variations in this classification scheme are possible; indeed, the boundaries of the whole genre are not fixed, for Timon of Athens is often included among the comedies, and Troilus and Cressida is sometimes considered a tragedy. 5. Shakespeare's earliest comedies are similar to existing plays, reflecting his inexperience. The Comedy of Errors—thought by many scholars to be h is first drama, though the dating of Shakespeare's early works is extremely difficult—is built on a play by the ancient Roman dramatist Plautus. Characteristically, Shakespeare enriched his source, but with material from another play by Plautus.The Subplot of The Taming of the Shrew was taken from a popular play of a generation earlier, and the main plot was well known in folklore, though the combination was ingeniously devised. The Two Gentlemen of Verona likewise deals with familiar literary material, treating it in the manner of John Lyly, the most successful comedy writer when Shakespeare began his career. 6. However, the young playwright soon found the confidence to experiment, and in Loves Labour's Lost, the Dream, and the Merchant, he created a group of unusual works that surely startled Elizabethan playgoers, though pleasurably, we may presume.In the first he created his own main plot and used a distinctively English variation on the Italian Commedia Dell’Arte traditions for a sub-plot. He thus produced a splendid array of comic situations. The play's abundant topical humor was certainly appreciated by the original audiences, although today we don't always know what it is about. In any case, the major characters are charming young lovers, the minor ones are droll eccentrics, and the closing coup de theatre, with which a darkening mood brings the work to a close, is a stunning innovation. Already, the eventual turn towards tragicomedy is foreshadowed.A Midsummer Night's Dream mingles motifs from many sources, but the story is again the playwright's own; moreover, the play's extraordinary combination of oddity and beauty was entirely unprecedented and has rarely been approximated since. The Merchant of Venice mixes a social theme, usury, into a conventional comedy plot to deepen the resonance of the final outcome as well as to vary the formula. Here, the threat that is finally averted is so dire as to generate an almost tragic mood, again a nticipating developments later in the playwright's career. . The mastery that Shakespeare had achieved by the late 1590s is reflected in the insouciance of the titles he gave his mature comedies (Twelfth Night's subtitle—'What You Will'—matches the others). That mastery is accompanied by a serious intent that is lacking in the earliest comedies. Shakespeare could not ignore the inherent poignancy in the contrast between life as it is lived and the escape from life represented by comedy. In Much Ado, as in The Merchant of Venice, a serious threat to life and happiness counters the froth of a romantic farce.Even in As You Like It, one of the most purely entertaining of Shakespeare's plays, the melancholy Jaques interposes his conviction that life is irredeemably corrupt. Feste’s song at the close of Twelfth Night gives touching expression to such sentiments, as he sends us from the theatre with the melancholy refrain, ‘the rain it raineth every day' (5. 1. 3 91). We are not expected to take him too seriously, but we cannot avoid the realization that even the life of a jester may be a sad one.The mature comedies thus further a blending of comedy and tragedy. 8. In the end, however, all of Shakespeare's comedies, including the later problem plays and romances, are driven by love. Love in Shakespearean comedy is stronger than the inertia of custom, the power of evil, or the fortunes of chance and time. In all of these plays but one (Troilus and Cressida), the obstacles presented to love are triumphantly overcome, as conflicts are resolved and errors forgiven in a general aura of reconciliation and marital bliss at the play's close.Such intransigent characters as Shylock, Malvolio, and Don John, who choose not to act out of love, cannot be accommodated in this scheme, and they are carefully isolated from the action before the climax. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 9. In their resolutions Shakespeare's comedies resemble the medieval Morality Pl ay, which centeres on a sinful human who receives God's mercy. In these secular works, a human authority figure—Don Pedro or Duke Senior, for instance—is symbolically divine, the opponents of love are the representatives of sin, and all of the participants in the closing vignette partake of the play's love and forgiveness.Moreover, the context of marriage—at least alluded to at the close of all but Troilus and Cressida—is the cap-stone of the comedic solution, for these plays not only delight and entertain, they affirm, guaranteeing the future. Marriage, with its promise of offspring, reinvigorates society and transcends the purely personal element in sexual attraction and romantic love. Tragedy's focus on the individual makes death the central fact of life, but comedy, with its insistence on the ongoing process of love and sex and birth, confirms our awareness that life transcends the individual. 10.