Karen Newman 
Shakespeare“s Rhetoric of Comic Character [EPUB ebook] 

First published in 1985.
In this revisionist history of comic characterization, Karen Newman argues that, contrary to received opinion, Shakespeare was not the first comic dramatist to create self-conscious characters who seem “lifelike“ or “realistic“. His comic practice is firmly set within a comic tradition which stretches from Plautus and Menander to playwrights of the Italian Renaissance.