It seems that all comedies of all ages rely on the accuracy of meta-commentary, all successful comedies inhabit an illusory world full of flickering shadows of truth and mirrors filled with elements of human behavior. In many ways comedy takes our human experience out of our sheltered reality and into a liminal space that accentuates how strange, and in many ways crazy, our lives really are. The question in question, then, is whether The Tempest conforms to this rule and other conventional laws of standard comedy. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The Tempest blurs the lines of what is real and what is not, so easily and so quickly throughout the plot that it can be considered tipped beyond the metaphorical edge of reason into a chaotic illusion, however, the comic structure holds the work together and prevents it from entering a genre closer to the Theater of the Absurd without a classical resolution. To achieve this, Shakespeare initially takes away one of humanity's greatest structures: time. Although the play takes place chronologically, there are no clocks and none of the characters mention the day when talking about the island, which distances the play from our relatable world. Prospero mentions time to Miranda when talking about Naples, as he states that his usurpation was "a midnight" (i), despite this being a fleeting phrase it separates Naples and the Island, which is separating our world from this new space liminal of the Island. The element of time provides certainty when humans are confused by a series of events, and now that it has been taken away nothing is provable and therefore cannot be thought of as real or ever happening. Throughout the plot there is also evidence that illusion is powerful on this island, for example the caption "the banquet vanishes"(ii) which is contrary to anything that could actually happen in the real world. Shakespeare then highlights the distance between The Island and our reality while Gonzalo asks "If I were to report this now in Naples, would they believe me?"(iii) The answer is no, but the normal rules of physics do not apply to the Island or to possible liminal spaces in comedies; the Island is on a membrane of physics. Many parallels can also be drawn between a dream and The Tempest because many of their characteristics are familiar; in a dream ultimately nothing matters, in the same way that The Tempest follows the structure of exposition, complication but then ultimately resolution which is the joyous event in which the characters end the play in a state of mind better than what they came in with and so the characters didn't really suffer. Throughout the play Shakespeare allows the characters to slip in and out of consciousness at the whims of Prospero, at one point there is a direction that commands "all the sleep" (iv). Shakespeare's last speech also contains the lines "We are the stuff dreams are made of" (v) This additional element of the dream only adds to the already distorted and undefinable new reality found on the Island. In the Jacobean era it would have been very difficult to achieve this effect of The Island to the limit, and much of the way audiences interpreted the play would have depended on the staging techniques used by theater companies. However, Shakespeare takes into account the difficulties of staging a storm that causes the characters to enter the realm of illusion and then uses language to show the audience that they must now see the play without such certainties. One technique in particular that is very effective is dialogueat the beginning of the play because the audience can clearly distinguish the social status of the characters on stage due to the clothing and the way they speak, the higher status characters speak in iambic pentameter, but then Shakespeare breaks down the basis of the hierarchy by making the authoritative and authoritative lines of the Boatswain, which is very unusual towards the King of Naples, as when he orders them to ""go to the cabin. Silence!" (vi). The audience can now understand that The Island is not their reality because the working class workers command Kings and Dukes, the antithesis between the Boatswain and the King would be very clear on stage and in a certain amusing measure for the Jacobean audience. Many critics have thought about the Tempest as comedy or tragedy and as tragicomedy because of the different elements that support each of them in the work is achieved through the continuous plots of revenge and murder, including Caliban, Sebastian and Antonio and although the plots are never realized, it can still be considered an underlying evil surrounding the characters. Therefore, the game is also on the fringes of genres as it contains multi-layered plots but it does not maintain the law that in tragicomedies the dominant characters are ugly At the time of the release of The Tempest not much debate would arise because our modern audience identifies with Caliban. The slightly melancholy directed “Exeunt Caliban”(vii) has sparked a lot of discussion about whether Caliban gets his resolution and if not, is the play a comedy? Similarly a modern audience has pondered after the play whether Antonio and Sebastian will be punished further for their attempted murder or whether they will attempt to overthrow Alonso again, evidence that they will do so can be found in the line "O' but one word" (viii ) which suggests that Sebastian is so close to killing Gonzalo and has no moral qualms about doing so, which makes modern audiences think that another usurpation is imminent. One must also take into account the interpretation of the Jacobean audience because they would argue that the work is not on the border between the two genres because there is a clear resolution for all human character; they would go on to explain that Caliban is a stereotypical, one-dimensional native who belongs on the Island, so he gets his classic "happy ending". I, as a modern member of a modern audience, respond differently to the Jacobean audience, and argue that Caliban was brought into the realm of humanity and education thanks to Prospero, Shakespeare makes explicit that Prospero did this in the lines “Mi I have taken the trouble to make you talk" (ix) and because of this education Caliban is now trapped forever in the liminal space where he cannot converse or progress in his new education, through this it is clear that Caliban is left in a worse situation than that he was in. he was before Prospero's arrival, so he is a tragic character. Again the Jacobean audience would find this view disconcerting because to them Caliban is an aesthetic of exaggeration and anti-humanism that is fundamentally interesting to them, and often. funny Even one eminent critic agreed with their position stating: "We find him (Caliban) only ridiculously horrible and equally wonderful, even if at heart, a weak monster, very interesting, because we see from the beginning that none of the his threats will be fulfilled" (x) Shakespeare allowed, depending on how he is portrayed, Caliban to be ridiculed by the audience to a higher degree than any other character, modern audiences have empathy for Caliban, which is what makes the genre that is so difficult to interpret. define.Prospero, as a character, can be considered borderline for a number of reasons. In 3, 54