Shakespeare’s Comedies

The comedies selected for this book titled Shakespeare’s Comedies have been translated into Standard English from The Folio Society Limited Edition publication of The Norton Facsimile (Second edition) of the 1623 First Folio publication of Shakespeare’s plays.

I have selected these plays because, while they do not comprise the full list that the 1623 First Folio identified as his comedies, it seems to me that they stand out as the funniest plays by Shakespeare. In most of his plays, Shakespeare includes witty characters and at least one scene that has a comic intention but the plays selected for this book abound with witty characters, jokes, and humorous, laughter promoting scenes, even in Much Ado About Nothing, which could easily have turned into a tragedy in the hands of a less skillful playwright

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• Love’s Labour’s Lost
• Much Ado about Nothing
• The Comedy of Errors
• The Friendly Wives of Windsor
• The Taming of the Shrew
• Twelfth Night or What You Want

Jeanne Arthur

Jeanne Arthur BA (Honours Drama) is a retired teacher of Drama, English and History who was inspired to translate Shakespeare’s plays into modern English by her students who asked questions about the plays that were not easy to answer even though she had an honors degree in Drama from Flinders University and thirty years of teaching Drama. Retirement gave Jeanne the time and opportunity to write these translations to answer her students’ questions and to allow her to reflect on Shakespeare’s plays at a leisurely pace. She believes the outcome of this experience will be helpful to readers, performers and theatre workers as it brings many years of working on Shakespeare’s plays and poetry to clarify their meaning and create immediately accessible texts supported by thorough explanatory notes about Shakespeare’s world.