LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PREFATORY NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
PROLOGUE:SHAKESPEARE’’S ENGLAND-AN OVERVIEW
PART ONE:CONTEXTS OF COMEDY
1 Laughter and Elizabethan society
Cultural distance and the study of comedy
’’Replete with mirthful laughter’’:everyday laughter
’’My Lord of Misrule’’:festival,carnival and inversionary laughter
’’Rough music’’:the laughter of ridicule
2 Fools,clowns and jesters
Jester and fool
’’Invest me in my motley’’:stage clowns and fool roles
’’No more than is set down for them’’:improvisation,jigs and drolls
3 An audience for comedy
Stage and audience
The audience in the theatre
Audience on stage
Women in the Elizabethan theatre audience
’’A Christmas gambol or a tumbling trick?’’
4 Twentieth-century readings of comedy
’’Recognizing the ridiculous’’:neo-classical approaches
’’Turbulenta prima, trauquilla ultima’’:generic approaches
’’The triumph of life’’:rituals of the green world
Recent approaches
Part TWO:CRITICAL ANALYSIS
5 shakespeare’’s early comedies
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
The Taming of the Shrew
Love’’s Labour’’s Lost
6 a midsummer night’’s dream
’’A league without the town’’
’’It seems that yet we sleep,we dream’’
’’Man is but an ass if the go about t’’expound this dream’’
’’A play there is,my lord...’’
’’Theseus,our renowned Duke’’
’’So good night unto you all’’
7 much ado about nothing
’’Huddling jest upon jest
’’Deceivers ever’’
’’I cannot woo in festival terms’’
8 as you like it
’’Under the greenwood tree’’:the pastoral dialectic
’’A fool i’’th’’forest’’:satirical clowning
’’No clock in the forest’’
’’Suit me all points like a man’’
9 twelth night
’’Give me excess of it’’
’’At our feast we had a play’’
’’I smell a device’’
’’Are all the people mad?’’
’’Like Patience on a monument’’
PART THREE:REFERENCE SECTION
Short biographies
Further reading
Appendix:The theatres of Shakespeare’’s London
Index