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Why did theatre audiences laugh in Shakespeare's day? Why do they still laugh now? What did Shakespeare do with the conventions of comedy that he inherited, so that his plays continue to amuse and move audiences? What do his comedies have to say about love, sex, gender, power, family, community, and class? What place have pain, cruelty, and even death in a comedy? Why all those puns? In a survey that travels from Shakespeare's earliest experiments in farce and courtly love-stories to the great romantic comedies of his middle years and the mould-breaking experiments of his last decade's work, this book addresses these vital questions. Organised thematically, and covering all Shakespeare's comedies from the beginning to the end of his career, it provides readers with a map of the playwright's comic styles, showing how he built on comedic conventions as he further enriched the possibilities of the genre.

'Literature and Heresy in the Age of Chaucer is a wonderful synthesis of adroit and daring close readings with scrupulous historicizing. ... Cole persuades the reader of the importance of Wycliffism to English literary history through well-chosen and deftly analyzed examples. One of the book's greatest strengths is its vigorous, lucid prose - the style of an author who has the courage of his convictions. Literature and Heresy stimulates and provokes. It is a must-read not just for those interested in the orthodoxies and heterodoxies of the age, but for all concerned with the literary history of late medieval England.' Review of English Studies

'The book demonstrates the author's mastery of many subtle discourses of religious and literary culture and experience. ... This is an important and provocative book that deserves to be widely read.' History Today

The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales (mostly in verse, although some are in prose) are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. In a long list of works, including "Troilus and Criseyde", "House of Fame", "Parliament of Fowls", the Canterbury Tales was Chaucer's magnum opus. He uses the tales and the descriptions of the characters to paint an ironic and critical portrait of English society at the time, and particularly of the Church. Structurally, the collection bears the influence of The Decameron, which Chaucer is said to have come across during his first diplomatic mission to Italy in 1372. However, Chaucer peoples his tales with 'sondry folk' rather than Boccaccio's fleeing nobles. 

Written and Illustrated by Howard Pyle

   After several years of contemplation and of thought upon the matter herein contained, it has at last come about, by the Grace of God, that I have been able to write this work with such pleasure of spirit that, if it gives to you but a part of the joy that it hath afforded me, I shall be very well content with what I have done.
   For when, in pursuing this history, I have come to consider the high nobility of spirit that moved these excellent men to act as they did, I have felt that they have afforded such a perfect example of courage and humility that anyone might do exceedingly well to follow after their manner of behavior in such measure as he is able to do.
   For I believe that King Arthur was the most honorable, gentle Knight who ever lived in all the world. And those who were his fellows of the Round Table - taking him as their looking-glass of chivalry - made, altogether, such a company of noble knights that it is hardly to be supposed that their like will ever be seen again in this world. Wherefore it is that I have had such extraordinary pleasure in beholding how those famous knights behaved whenever circumstances called upon them to perform their endeavor.

N. J. Higham. King Arthur: Myth-Making and History. New York: Routledge. 2002. Pp. Xi, 303. $27.95. ISBN 0-415-21305-3.

N. J. Higham is the sort of scholar that Heads of Department dream about--which may be why he currently is Head of Manchester University's History Department. Eight serious books in ten years makes quite a striking-rate. Most of these have focussed on the transition from Roman Britain to "Germanic" England, though he has also had a go at English history's other great transition, 1066. It was logical and characteristic that he now move on to that truly Dark (i.e. barely visible) Age's most celebrated product, "King Arthur." Quote-marks are appropriate. If the Arthur of medieval romance did exist, which is far from certain, he was almost certainly not a king. Higham's view of the matter is categorical; his views usually are. There could have been a "dux bellorum" (war-leader) called Arthur, whose actual name was on philological grounds probably Artorius.