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".

Introduction; Chapter 1 The inward springs; Chapter 2 Comic plot conventions in Measure for Measure; Chapter 3 Menander and New Comedy; Chapter 4 Plautus and Terence; Chapter 5 The enchantments of Circe; Chapter 6 'And all their minds transfigur'd'; Chapter 7 Magic versus time; Chapter 8 Mistaking in Much Ado; Chapter 9 Shakespeare's rhetoric of consciousness;