Shakespeare's Comedy of Love By Alexander Leggatt

In this study of Shakespeare's comedies of love, from The Comedy of Errors to Twelfth Night, Alexander Leggatt seeks to remove some of the critical puzzles that the plays have posed in the past. He argues that what distinguishes the comedies is not their similarity but their variety—the way in which each play is a new experiment, a new combination of essentially familiar elements, so that, for example, the boy/girl changes in The Merchant of Venice are seen to have a quite different significance from those in As You Like It. A thoughtful and open-minded book, which should prove helpful both to the general reader and to students of Shakespeare.