1. The inward sprints: Measure for Measure II 2. Comic plot conventions in Measure for Measure 3. Menander and New Comedy4. Plautus and Terence5. The enchantments of Circe 6. 'And all their minds transfigur'd': Shakespeare's early comedies 7. Magic versus time: As You Like It and Twelfth Night 8. Mistaking in Much Ado 9. Shakespeare's Rhetoric of consciousness

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.