Life is a Comedy by Shakespeare

In Shakespeare’s "comedies"
Lives were destroyed
And loves led astray
While callous laughs served to bruise the egos
Of broken men
Indeed, as the first tentative snicker breaks the silence before the uproar,
(Ovations of a seemingly sadistic society)
Each spectator in his mind begins, perhaps, to revolt his role as puppet to the tactless jest
For cowardly is the beholder of disillusion, catastrophe,
Stung by too-frank "aide memoire" to his own despair
Within the wood-and-straw confines of a confused reality
Where the salt of laughter is the salt of tears that betray their tracks on dirty faces
The squalid air is thick with doubt; each pause uncomfortable in the raw emotion of its silence
Laugh if you will, and you will.
Then ponder the painful candour of such theatre
For is humanity so cruel
That this life we suffer all just one big joke?