The Cambridge Companion to Shakespearean ComedyAlexander Leggatt Cambridge University Press, 2002 - 237 pages This is an accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies and romances. Rather than taking each play in isolation, the chapters trace recurring issues, suggesting both the continuity and the variety of Shakespeare's practice and the creative use he made of the conventions he inherited. The first section places Shakespeare in the context of classical and Renaissance comedy, his Elizabethan predecessors and the traditions of popular festivity. The second section traces themes through Shakespeare's early and middle comedies, tragicomedies and late romances, illuminating particular plays by close analysis. |
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Contents
Roman comedy | 18 |
Italian stories on the stage | 32 |
Elizabethan comedy | 47 |
Popular festivity | 64 |
Shakespearean comedy | 70 |
Forms of confusion | 81 |
Love and courtship | 102 |
Laughing at others | 123 |
Comedy and sex | 139 |
IO Language and comedy | 156 |
Sexual disguise and the theatre of gender | 179 |
Matters of state | 198 |
The experiment of romance | 215 |
230 | |
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action actor Antipholus audience Barabas Benedick Berowne boy player Caliban Cambridge Companion Cambridge University Press characters classical Claudio clown Comedy of Errors commedia confusion court courtship critics cross-dressed Cymbeline death disguise dramatic Duke early modern edited Elizabethan England English Falstaff Friar Ganymed gender genre Gentlemen of Verona heroines human identity Isabella Italian joke Jonson Katherina King language laughter literary London Love's Labor's Lost lovers Lyly Lyly's male Malvolio marriage Measure for Measure Merchant of Venice Merry Wives Midsummer Night's Dream mocked moral narrative Olivia Orlando Orsino Oxford pastoral performance Pericles Petruchio Plautus play play's playwrights plot Portia Posthumus Prospero Renaissance rhetorical role Roman comedy romance Rosalind scene Sebastian sexual Shakespeare Shakespeare's comic Shakespearean comedy Shrew Shylock social speech stage story Taming Tempest Terence theatre theatregrams theatrical thou tion tradition tragedy turn Twelfth Night Viola Winter's Tale woman women words