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Recently I was a stage manager in Collegiate's production of Anything Goes. Anything Goes is a musical written by Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse with musical score and lyrics by Cole Porter. It was first written and performed 1934. The longer I worked on the show and the more time I spend in Shakespeare class and reading his works the more I realized that Anything Goes is basically a Shakespearean comedy. There are many elements that characterize a Shakespearean comedy. One such element is mistaken identity. Whether it is Moonface Martin and Billy Crocker weaving through numerous disguises or Eli Whitney blindly mistaking a sailor for his love, Evangeline Harcourt, people mistaking others for someone else occurs constantly throughout the musical. Mistaken identity also plays into the next common theme in Shakespeare, which is mistaken love. Initially, Reno loves Billy, who loves Hope, who is marrying Evelyn. My the end of the story though the love interests of many of the characters have shaken around. One device that I noticed Shakespeare uses in much of his writing is in a person's faithfulness to their loves. I am not talking about infidelity in marriage, but rather how quickly or effortlessly a character jumps from throws their affection from one character to another. By simply having a character like the same person for the whole play Shakespeare manages to show that person is strong in their resolves, which shows them morally sound or as a hero. Another element of Shakespearean comedy is that Shakespeare usually has a lot going in his plays. He has a way of demanding that his audience or his readers keep up and his comedic timing is what makes his plays (that I have read) so good. If you don't listen or even if you don’t listen very closely there is a good chance you will miss something that everyone else finds funny. Finally, the final scene of the musical is the cherry on top of our Shakespearean sunday. The final scene begins with all the falsehood from throughout the show being revealed. Billy tells Whitney about stowing away on the ship, Reno and Lord Evelyn Oakley share their feelings for each other, and the Purser returns Ms. Harcourt’s dog. Eli Whitney, who had his glasses stolen earlier in the show, is given back his glasses so he can finally see everything clearly, a very symbolic gesture. The very last moment shows the three happy couples standing together showing that love has prevailed. Although a Broadway musical written in the 1930s is a completely different type of theater than Shakespeare, there are clear parallels between Anything Goes and a Shakespearean comedy.