Introduction : comedy as idea and practice.- Farce : The comedy of errors, The taming of the shrew, The merry wives of Windsor.- Courtly lovers and the real world : Two gentlemen of Verona, A midsummer night's dream, The merchant of Venice.- Comedy and language : Love's labour's lost.- Romantic comedy : Much ado about nothing, As you like it, Twelfth night.- Problematic plots and endings : clowning and comedy post-Hamlet : Measure for measure, All's well that ends well, The winter's tale, Cymbeline, The tempes.- The afterlives of Shakespeare's comedies