A new and vital form of drama blossomed in 16th-century England, blending classic Latin comedy traditions with keen satires of contemporary London life. Although Shakespeare remains the most recognizable playwright of the Elizabethan age, there were many others whose work continues to entertain and educate students of drama to this day. This anthology collects timeless comedies that both informed Shakespeare's work and took inspiration from the Bard himself. Six plays include Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour, the comedy that made the author's reputation; Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay by Robert Greene, a groundbreaking play in terms of multiple-plot structure; The Shoemaker's Holiday, or The Gentle Craft by Thomas Dekker, the "Dickens of English theater"; All Fools, George Chapman's sprightly romp; A Trick to Catch the Old One by Thomas Middleton, one of the era's most prolific and successful playwrights; and Eastward Ho!, a collaborative work by Chapman, Jonson, and John Marston.

An accessible, wide-ranging and informed introduction to Shakespeare's comedies, dark comedies and romances, first published in 2001.

The evolution of Shakespeare's comedy, in Larry Champion's view, is apparent in the expansion of his comic vision to include a complete reflection of human life while maintaining a comic detachment for the audience. Like the other popular dramatists of Elizabethan England, Shakespeare used the diverse comic motifs and devices which time and custom had proved effective. He went further, however, and created progressively deeper levels of characterization and plot interaction, thereby forming characters who were not merely devices subordinated to the needs of the plot. Shakespeare's development as a comic playwright, suggests Champion, was "consistently in the direction of complexity or depth of characterization." His earliest works, like those of his contemporaries, are essentially situation comedies: the humor arises from action rather than character. There is no significant development of the main characters; instead, they are manipulated into situations which are humorous as a result, for example, of mistaken identity or slapstick confusion. The ensuing phase of Shakespeare's comedy sets forth plots in which the emphasis is on identity rather than physical action, a revelation of character which occurs in one of two forms: either a hypocrite is exposed for what he actually is or a character who has assumed an unnatural or abnormal pose is forced to realize and admit the ridiculousness of his position. In the final comedies involving sin and sacrificial forgiveness, however, character development is concerned with a "transformation of values." Although each of the comedies is discussed, Champion concentrates on nine, dividing them according to the complexity of characterization. He pursues as well the playwright's efforts to achieve for the spectator the detached stance so vital to comedy. Shakespeare obtained this perspective, Champion observes, through experimentation with the use of material mirroring the main action--mockery, parody, or caricature--and through the use of a "comic pointer" who is himself involved in the action but is sufficiently independent of the other characters to provide the audience with an omniscient view.

In this groundbreaking book one of the most original and compelling voices in contemporary Shakespeare criticism undertakes a detailed study of the ten extraordinary comedies Shakespeare wrote during his first decade as a dramatist: The Comedy of Errors, The Taming of the Shrew, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It and Twelfth Night. Through close readings of these plays Kiernan Ryan reveals Shakespeare's deepening disenchantment with his world and his dream of that world transfigured. Ryan engages with each comedy as a unique work of dramatic and poetic art, with its own distinctive concerns and critical challenges, paying special attention to its language and form. As the haunting vision shared by the plays emerges from Ryan's acute analysis of each of them, the book transforms our understanding and appreciation of Shakespearean comedy. Written in a lively, accessible style, Shakespeare's Comedies is essential reading not only for students and teachers, but also for anyone keen to consider these plays from a fresh perspective.

With summaries, discussions, and excerpts from primary source documents, this book examines Shakespeare's world through careful consideration of the historical background of four of his comedies. Comedy was popular during the Renaissance, and it was also one of Shakespeare's specialties. The four plays discussed in this book, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night and The Tempest, span Shakespeare's career and remind us that Shakespeare, more than any of his contemporaries, explored the possibilities of comedy, consistently developing new approaches to the genre. Shakespeare was a fairly traditional playwright, well aware of the long tradition of comedy, which dates back to the Greeks and Romans. This book places Shakespeare's comedies in their historical context. It includes dedicated chapters on each of the four comedies, with each chapter providing a plot summary, a discussion of the play's historical background and significance, and excerpts from primary source documents related to the play. An introduction surveys the historical background of the plays, while a timeline chronicles key events that influenced them. Suggestions for further reading direct readers to additional sources of information.

Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why do they still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventions of comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuse and move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about love, sex, gender, power, family, community, and class? What place have pain, cruelty, and even death in a comedy? Why all those puns? In a survey that travels from Shakespeare's earliest experiments in farce and courtly love-stories to the great romantic comedies of his middle years and the mould-breaking experiments of his last decade's work, this book addresses these vital questions. Organised thematically, and covering all Shakespeare's comedies from the beginning to the end of his career, it provides readers with a map of the playwright's comic styles, showing how he built on comedic conventions as he further enriched the possibilities of the genre.

From The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early 1590s to The Two Noble Kinsmen at the end of his career around 1614, Shakespeare wrote at least eighteen plays that can be called 'comedies': a far higher number than that for any other genre in which he wrote. So what is a Shakespearean comedy? We associate these plays with such themes as mistaken identities, happy marriages, and exuberant cross dressing, but how representative are these of the oeuvre as a whole? In this Very Short Introduction, Bart van Es explores the full range of the playwright's comic writing, from the neat classical plotting of early works like The Comedy of Errors to the corrupt world of the so-called problem plays, written in the middle years of Shakespeare's life. Examining Shakespeare's influences and sources, van Es compares his plays to those of his rivals, and looks at the history of the plays in performance, from the biographies of Shakespeare's original actors to the plays' endless reinvention in modern stage productions and in films. Identifying the key qualities that make Shakespearean comedy distinctive, van Es traces the changing nature of Shakespeare's comic writing over the course of a career that spanned nearly a quarter century of theatrical change. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.