One of the first and most important Italian playwrights to move away from the commedia dell’arte tradition of improvisation, Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) wrote more naturalistic “comedies of character” that featured the dialect and situations of everyday life in Venice. Five Comedies collects a selection of Goldoni’s finest plays, annotated and translated into English: The New House, The Coffee House, and “The Holiday Trilogy” (Off to the Country, Adventures in the Country, and Back from the Country). Editor Michael Hackett provides an introduction to Goldoni and his performance tradition for directors, actors, and designers, revealing the masterful construction of Goldoni’s plays, while an afterword by Cesare de Michelis carefully reconstructs the playwright’s life and times.

Though better known today as a political theorist than as a dramatist, Machiavelli secured his fame as a giant in the history of Italian comedy more than fifty years before Shakespeare's comedies delighted English-speaking audiences. This bilingual edition includes all three examples of Machiavelli's comedic art: sparkling translations of his farcical masterpiece, The Mandrake; of his version of Terence's The Woman From Andros; and of his Plautus-inspired Clizia--works whose genre afforded Machiavelli a unique vehicle not only for entertaining audiences but for examining virtue amid the twists and turns of fortune.

A massive anthology of Shakespeare's comedies are collected here; included is an analysis of each major work and a biography about the life and times of Shakespeare. The following works are included in this collection: All's Well That Ends Well As You Like It The Comedy of Errors A Fairy Tale in Two Acts Taken from Shakespeare Love’s Labour’s Lost Measure for Measure The Merchant of Venice The Merry Wives of Windsor A Midsummer Night's Dream Much Ado About Nothing Pericles Prince of Tyre The Taming of the Shrew The Tempest Twelfth Night Two Gentlemen of Verona The Winter's Tale

Mel Brooks is often regarded as one of Hollywood's funniest men, thanks to such highly successful films as The Producers, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein. His films do have a tendency to turn out much like the jokes that comprise them--hit-or-miss, one minute shoot-the-moon brilliant and the next minute well short of laughs. This work provides a thorough synopsis and thematic analysis for each of his twelve films along with complete cast and production credits: The Producers (1968), The Twelve Chairs (1970), Blazing Saddles (1974), Young Frankenstein (1974), Silent Movie (1976), High Anxiety (1977), History of the World--Part 1 (1981), To Be or Not to Be (1983), Spaceballs (1987), Life Stinks (1991), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), and Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).

This fascinating edition examines the comedies of playwright William Shakespeare through the lens of sexuality. Essays explore topics such as the ambiguity of Shakespeare's sonnets, Renaissance attitudes toward sexuality, themes of misogyny in Taming of the Shrew, and sexual anxiety in Much Ado About Nothing. Modern perspectives on sexuality and courtship are also presented, covering subjects such as social media and dating, modern mythology about the differences between genders, and a decline in American romantic comedies.

This is a book worthy of high praise. . . . All versions are exceedingly witty and versatile, in verse that ripples from one’s lips, pulling all the punches of Plautus, the knockabout king of farce, and proving that the more polished Terence can be just as funny. Accuracy to the original has been thoroughly respected, but look at the humour in rendering Diphilius’ play called Synapothnescontes as Three’s a Shroud. . . . Students in schools and colleges will benefit from short introductions to each play, to Roman stage conventions, to different types of Greek and Roman comedy, and there is a note on staging, with a diagram illustrating a typical Roman stage and further diagrams of the basic set for each play. The translators have paid more attention to stage directions than is usually given in translations, because they aim to show how these plays worked. This is a book to be used and enjoyed. --Raymond J. Clark, The Classical Outlook

In Restoration Stage Comedies and Hollywood Remarriage Films, Elizabeth Kraft brings the canon of Restoration comedy into the conversation initiated by Stanley Cavell in his book Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Before there could be imagined remarriages of the sort Cavell documents, there had to be imagined marriages of equality. Such imagined marriages were first mapped out on the Restoration stage by witty pairs such as Harriet and Dorimant, Millamant and Mirabell, and Alithea and Harcourt who are precursors of the central couples in films such as Bringing Up Baby, His Girl Friday, and The Lady Eve. In considering the Restoration comedy canon in one-on-one discourse with the Hollywood remarriage comedy canon, Kraft demonstrates the indebtedness of the twentieth-century films to the Restoration dramatic texts-and the philosophical richness of both canons as they explore the nature and significance of marriage as pursuit of moral perfectionism. Her book will be of interest to specialists in Restoration drama and film scholars.

Traditional philosophy places a singular emphasis on tragedy, acting under the assumption that tragedy is more profound than comedy. Gelven argues that comedy deserves equal if not greater attention from philosophy. Through the interpretative readings and concrete analysis of three classical works, Gelven shows that comedy provides an access to truth unavailable by any other means. Silvius in Shakespeares's As You Like It, Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and Lord Goring in Wilde's An Ideal Husband are examined in terms of why and how they are comic, along with how and why they are seen both as fools and yet as graced. Gelven finds that in revealing the spirit of graced folly, comedy teaches us about our own essence, the fundamental nature of our finitude. This will undoubtedly be of considerable importance not only to philosophical aestheticians or literary critics, but also for those seeking to understand the nature of truth itself.

"... containing the names and the disposition made of more than 20,000 pictures, from ... May 15th, 1915, up to the end of the year 1917. This list will be supplemented by further lists presented at the end of each half yearly period."--Pennsylvania. State Board of Censors of Moving Pictures. Report, 1918, p. 7.