Saturnalia and Shakespearean Comedy: Barber's Framework
This paper examines C.L. Barber's thesis that Shakespeare's festival comedies — particularly A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night — replicate the structure and psychological function of the Roman Saturnalia. During Saturnalia, rigid social hierarchies were temporarily inverted, providing a contained, ritualized release for suppressed resentment among the lower classes. The paper applies this framework to Shakespearean examples, including Bottom's enchantment by the fairy queen and Viola's cross-dressing in Twelfth Night, arguing that these comedies allow transgressive desires to surface safely within a festive context before social order is restored.
- Introduction: Barber's Saturnalia Thesis: Barber links festival comedy to Roman Saturnalia
- Saturnalia in Ancient Rome: Social inversion and psychological release in Roman ritual
- Social and Sexual Inversion in Shakespeare's Comedies: Bottom and Viola as Saturnalian inversion figures
- The Psychological Function of Festive Release: Festive release makes suppression more bearable
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What makes this paper effective
- It grounds a literary argument in a clearly named critical framework — Barber's Shakespeare's Festive Comedy — and applies it consistently to two well-chosen texts.
- The parallel structure between the description of Roman Saturnalia and the Shakespearean examples is logically tight, making the comparison easy to follow.
- The paper acknowledges both sides of the Saturnalian bargain — release for the lower classes and security for the ruling classes — showing an appreciation for the social function of ritual beyond mere entertainment.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates applied literary criticism: taking a named scholarly framework (Barber's Saturnalia model) and systematically testing it against specific textual evidence. Rather than summarizing the plays, it selects precise examples — Bottom's transformation and Viola's disguise — to illustrate the theoretical claim, which is the hallmark of efficient close reading in support of a larger argument.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by introducing Barber's thesis and defining Saturnalia. It then establishes the social and psychological function of Saturnalia in ancient Rome. The second paragraph transitions to Shakespeare, providing textual examples from both comedies and explaining how the festive structure produces psychological release. A single bibliographic citation closes the paper, consistent with MLA formatting.
Introduction: Barber's Saturnalia Thesis
C.L. Barber argues that all of Shakespeare's festival comedies — such as A Midsummer Night's Dream and Twelfth Night — make use of the convention of the Roman Saturnalia. During Saturnalia in ancient Rome, the social norms of that world were turned upside down: paupers were allowed to don the robes of the gentry, and slaves enacted the role of kings.
Saturnalia in Ancient Rome
This ritual was not simply a diversion to while away the long winter hours of darkness, but an effective psychological release for the lower classes of an otherwise repressive society — at the very least, they could abuse their masters for a day. Likewise, the ruling classes achieved a measure of security by knowing that the negative feelings of the lower classes could be released in a contained and ritualized fashion, rather than through the uncontained means of revolt and permanent disorder such as revolution.
Social and Sexual Inversion in Shakespeare's Comedies
Similarly, all of Shakespeare's festival comedies involve social inversions. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, the existing world is temporarily turned upside down: the ass-headed Bottom becomes the beloved of the fairy queen, to take just one example from that play. In Twelfth Night, these inversions often involve gender or sexual confusion alongside social confusion — Viola dresses as a young boy and pretends to be a servant, even though she is a young gentlewoman.
Work Cited
Barber, C.L. Shakespeare's Festive Comedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.
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