Emma Smith 
Shakespeare’s Comedies [PDF ebook] 

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.

Table of Content

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

1 The Development of Criticism of Shakespeare’s Comedies.

2 Genre.

Marriage as Comic Closure.

False Immortality in Measure for Measure.

3 Language.

Here Follows Prose.

Transfer of Title in Love’s Labour’s Lost.

4 Gender and Sexuality.

Helena’s Bed-trick.

The Homoerotics of Shakespearian.

Comedy.

5 History and Politics.

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?.

Bottom’s Up.

6 Performance.

Kate: Interpreting the Silence.

As You Like It.

Index

About the author

Emma Smith is Fellow of Hertford College and Lecturer in English at Oxford University. Her publications include Thomas Kyd: The Spanish Tragedie (ed. 1998) and Shakespeare in Production: Henry V (2000).