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Shakespeare's Comedies: A Very Short Introduction

Bart van Es

24 March 2016

ISBN: 9780198723356

144 pages
Paperback
174x111mm

In Stock

Very Short Introductions

Price: £8.99

In this Very Short Introduction Bart Van Es analyses Shakespeare's comedic plays, picking out the family resemblances across these works. He considers their shared themes such as confusion and cross dressing, misguided love, twins and substitutions, and explores the bard's verbal artistry and wit.

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Description

In this Very Short Introduction Bart Van Es analyses Shakespeare's comedic plays, picking out the family resemblances across these works. He considers their shared themes such as confusion and cross dressing, misguided love, twins and substitutions, and explores the bard's verbal artistry and wit.

  • Identifies the five distinctive qualities of Shakespearean comedy, and makes connections across all of Shakespeare's comic plays, including so-called 'romances' such as The Tempest or The Winter's Tale
  • Analyses Shakespeare's comedic plays in the context of their time
  • Explains theories of comedy from Aristotle to Freud and Bergson
  • Part of the bestselling Very Short Introductions series - over seven million copies sold worldwide

About the Author(s)

Bart van Es, Fellow and University Lecturer, St Catherine's College, Oxford

Bart van Es studied at Cambridge and is now a University Lecturer and Fellow in English at St Catherine's College, Oxford. He is the author of Spenser's Forms of History (OUP, 2002) and Shakespeare in Company (OUP, 2013), and is the editor of A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005). He has published many articles on Renaissance poetry and drama and is now conducting research into the children's acting companies that were rivals to Shakespeare's stage.

Table of Contents

    Introduction
    World
    Wit
    Love
    Time
    Character
    Endings
    Further Reading
    Index

Reviews

"Aimed at a general readership, the slim volume is nonetheless carefully researched and full of original ideas and connections." - Kevin Curran, Studies in English Literature 1500-1900

"cover[s] an impressive amount of literary and historical ground, and convey[s] a suitably sizeable serving of Shakespeare knowledge." - Shakespeare Magazine

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