This vintage book contains a fascinating treatise on the comic characters of Shakespeare's plays. With textual analysis and an exploration of the concept of comedy, this is a volume that will appeal to fans of Shakespeare's work and one that will be of considerable utility to students of literature. Contents include: “William Shakespeare”, “Introduction”, “Touchstone”, “Shylock”, “Bottom”, “Beatrice and Benedick”, “Love's Labour's Lost”, “As You Like It”, “The Merchant of Venice”, “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, and “Much Ado About Nothing”. Many vintage books such as this are becoming increasingly scarce and expensive. We are republishing this volume now in an affordable, high-quality edition complete with a specially commissioned new biography of Shakespeare. This book was first published in 1956.

Collects the entirety of the 12-issue arc of the award winning series. This title is filled with fresh art, sketches, a brand new back-up story, and fun annotations by top Shakespeare scholars.

Graphic novel adaptation of Prince Hamlet's struggle to deliver justice on his own terms.

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.