Contents

Acknowledgments

A note on texts

Introduction

1    The inward springs:
Measure for Measure II, ii, 162–87

2    Comic plot conventions in Measure for Measure

3    Menander and New Comedy

4    Plautus and Terence

5    The enchantments of Circe

6    ‘And all their minds transfigur’d’:
Shakespeare’s early comedies

7    Magic versus time:
As You Like It and Twelfth Night

8    Mistaking in Much Ado

9    Shakespeare’s rhetoric of consciousness

Notes

Index of plays discussed

General index