Shakespeare wedding speech

(please pardon my little bold and italicized inflection hints to myself!)

So, what does English literature say about marriage? In short, a lot. It would of course be impossible to discuss the whole of literary history here (lucky you), so I’m going to employ one of those pesky AP English terms – synecdoche –  to narrow the field and let Shakespeare stand in as the representative of any and all English writers, past, present and future. Because, though I did my senior thesis on Henry James, I don’t think anyone here really wants to know what he has to say on the subject.

Though current society defines something as “comedic” if it features two guys in letter jackets and one-liners about things that are brown and sticky, Shakespeare and his Elizabethan contemporaries called a play a “comedy” only if it ended in the marriage of the main character. From Pride and Prejudice to Cold Feet, so-called “romantic comedies” are really just affirmations of Shakespeare’s established precedent.  Conversely, a “tragedy” meant the play ended in death (or, in the case of a play like Hamlet, many many many deaths. If you know who is left on the “to be” rather than the “not to be” list at the end of that one, see me afterwards and I’ll add some extra credit to your grade.). This dichotomy doesn’t seem accidental: if comedy and tragedy are a literary yin and yang, Shakespeare appears to suggest that marriage is the antithesis of death – in fact, a birth: the start of a brand new life born out of love and companionship.

What’s interesting here is that a wedding, which is often mistaken as a synecdoche for a marriage, can feel like “the end” – of a courtship, of a year of planning, and of all the excitement and anticipation to see if those crazy kids will get together, after all. So let me paraphrase here from my favorite writer: “I like a good romantic comedy, but they begin in the wrong place. They end with the marriage. But marriage is the beginning!” Okay, that was a very liberal paraphrase, because it was actually Agatha Christie talking about murder mysteries, but I think the sentiment is the same. Despite how you might feel after almost a decade of dating, Shakespeare’s title “All’s Well That Ends Well” doesn’t fit what seems to be his real belief  – that “All’s Well That Begins Well.”

So what would Shakespeare – and, by proxy, the entire canon of English literature – write on the card attached to a wedding gift for you, Ross and Meredith? Just this: Congratulations! Your lifelong comedy begins today.