Comedies from the First Folio of Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories and Tragedies. The first published collection of William Shakespeare's plays. Published in 1623. Comedies include: The Tempest -- The Two Gentlemen of Verona -- The Merry Wives of Windsor -- Measure for Measure -- The Comedy of Errors -- Much Ado About Nothing -- Love's Labour's Lost -- A Midsummer Night's Dream -- The Merchant of Venice -- As You Like It -- The Taming of the Shrew -- All's Well That Ends Well -- Twelfth Night -- The Winter's Tale.

This Guide introduces students to critical writing on Shakespeare’s comedies over the last four centuries. Guides students through four centuries of critical writing on Shakespeare’s history plays. Covers both significant early views and recent critical interventions. Substantial editorial material links the articles and places them in context. Annotated suggestions for further reading allow students to investigate further.

These translations of Shakespeare's comedies stand on their own so that they may be read quickly and easily eliminating the need to search for the meaning of every second word but they are supplemented by supporting explanations of the world in which Shakespeare lived for those who are curious about it. Jeanne Arthur’s translations make Shakespeare accessible to the ordinary person. She hopes that they will make the fun and warmth of Shakespeare's comedies live in contemporary Western culture once again for many more people.

In Shakespeare's Comedies: All That Matters, Mike Scott explores and explains the secrets that have made Shakespeare's comedies so enduring that they continue to be performed, watched and studied by millions of people every year. Professor Scott focuses in turn on The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice and builds an argument based around Shakepeare's use of language to prompt the audience's imagination and thought. This original little book, and its companion volume Shakespeare's Tragedies, fills a major gap in the market for a book which will enable readers to understand a Shakesperean play in the context of its ouevre. This accessible and readable book will appeal both to students and general readers, giving a fascinating intoruduction to Shakespeare's comedies - and what matters most about them. "'Comedy is a serious business' says Michael Scott - it is, and his splendid short book takes it very seriously as it should, but remains lively and wonderfully readable withall." Dr Drummond Bone, Master of Balliol College, Oxford "An authoritative and expert overview of the entire fields of Shakespearean Comedy and Tragedy combined with persuasive and eminently accessible close readings of particular plays. Michael Scott brings to the task and infectious enthusiasm and deep knowledge of their theatrical, literary and cultural significance and he provides a clear and compelling endorsement of their continued relevance. These books provide an exemplary introduction to the complex world of Shakespearean drama, full of insights, observations, and ideas, all of which are brought firmly to bear on the abiding question of what these plays mean for us today." John Drakakis, Professor of English at the University of Stirling "Everything is so clear - no academic jargon, for instance. With Shakespeare's Comedies, even the most critical scholars can learn something... as well as students at the start of their encounter with Shakespeare and the same for regular theatre goers. To address all three at once... has to be an accomplishment... from the Introduction to the Conclusion... to the last sentence: (the) reader will readily grasp why this series of books is called All That Matters." Professor M.L.Wine, Evanston, USA

"This is exactly the kind of work, with its synthesis of theory, close reading, and deconstructive performance criticism that many of us in the profession have been looking for." -- Joel B. Altman, University of California, Berkeley "McCandless's book represents an inventive and illuminating account that not only produces a theoretically activated text but also explores a range of options for staging it, turning theoretical into theatrical meanings." -- Barbara Hodgdon, Drake University "The writing is clear, snappy, wonderfully informed with a vivid and experienced theatrical imagination... a book that taught me a good deal about the problem comedies, especially from the vantage point of performance, though the insights into performance are fully and incisively integrated with, and they richly illuminate, formal, thematic, and psychological vantage points on the play." -- Richard P. Wheeler, University of Illinois Composed at a critical moment in English history, All's Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida -- Shakespeare's problem plays -- dramatize a crisis in the sex-gender system. They register a male dread of emasculation and engulfment, a fear of female authority and sexuality. In these plays males identify desire for a female as dangerous and unmanly, females contend and confound traditional femininity. David McCandless's book is a unique and invigorating example of performance criticism that illuminates these difficult, sometimes-overlooked tragicomedies. It is an original and timely contribution to Shakespearean theater scholarship.

Comedy was at the centre of a critical storm that raged throughout the early modern period. Shakespeare's plays made capital of this controversy. In them he deliberately invokes the case against comedy made by the Elizabethan theatre haters. They are filled with jokes that go too far, laughter that hurts its victims, wordplay that turns to swordplay and aggressive acts of comic revenge. Through a detailed study which considers tragedies and histories as well as comedies, Maslen contends that Shakespeare's use of the comic mode is always calculatedly unsettling, and that this is part of what makes it pleasurable.