It is my pleasure to acknowledge the many debts and obligations this book owes to others. Thanks are due to Harvard University for the Mellon Faculty Fellowship (1980–1), and to Brown University for the Henry Merritt Wriston grant (Fall, 1981), which allowed me the leisure to refine my argument and most importantly, to write. My general dependence on past scholarship is indicated in the notes to my text, but more personal debts require acknowledgment separately. I have gathered untold benefits from Jonas Barish, whose example as both scholar and teacher first encouraged this study of Shakespeare. His reading of my manuscript at various stages has been invaluable both for its patience with my early confusions and its faith in the ultimate text. I am also grateful to Louise George Clubb who first introduced me to the richness of Italian Renaissance comedy and its relationships with Elizabethan drama; to W. S. Anderson, whose early course on Virgil prompted me to pursue the classics; to Barbara Lewalski and Walter Cohen who read my manuscript and made many attentive suggestions; to my colleagues at Brown who have provided enthusiastic intellectual support and good fellowship. Special thanks go to Steve Goodwin for his meticulous translations from the Greek, and to E. Walter Hop ton for his conscientious service in the final stages of preparing the typescript. I also owe a more general debt to Frangoise Cusin Jankowski, an early teacher and present friend.
And there are other kinds of debts: to my friends, Carol Cook and Betsy Fox Zimmerman, and to my husband, Thomas R. Brooks.