Framing the Sounds of Laughter in The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Framing the Sounds of Laughter in The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Summary/Abstract: This essay explores the jokes and moments of laughter represented in Shakespeare’s early comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona from the perspective of frametheory, informed by rhetoric, semantics, and cognitive mapping and developed by criticssuch as George Lakoff and Erving Goffman. By explaining some of the methods thatShakespeare employs to prompt laughter in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I identify themain frames of laughter that articulate humour in this comedy, represented by sounds oflaughter. Focusing on the keys used to elicit laughter—title, character types, and characternames—I argue that the Shakespearean comedy frames the sounds of laughter as responsesto several distinctive units of incongruity in the construction of the self. Laughter, therefore,is elicited from the audience through the medium of various jokes framed in the context ofword-play, character names, and the oddness of the rape scene, accessed by means ofculturally or universally understood keys. These aspects of the comedy confirm thehumanness of laughter through the introduction of the “character” of Crab the dog. Inaddition, the ambivalent use of the metaphoric spaces of the Italian cities (Verona, Mantua,and Milan) in The Two Gentlemen of Verona generates laughter; the city-space suggestingcivility is framed in contrast to the greenwood world populated by bizarre outlaws evolvingin the oblique settings of comedy. Sounds of laughter, therefore, are the result of comedicmoments that have an impact on theatre audiences and create a particular auralenvironment.

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