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Shakespeare's Rhetoric of Comic Character

By Karen Newman

Published September 26th 2008 by Routledge – 156 pages

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Description

First published in 1985.

In this revisionist history of comic characterization, Karen Newman argues that, contrary to received opinion, Shakespeare was not the first comic dramatist to create self-conscious characters who seem 'lifelike' or 'realistic'. His comic practice is firmly set within a comic tradition which stretches from Plautus and Menander to playwrights of the Italian Renaissance.