Indira Ghose: 2 books

Much Ado About Nothing presents a world of glittering surfaces and exquisite social performances. The language of the play sparkles with a fireworks of wit and dazzling bouts of repartee, most memorably in the "merry war" of words between the reluctant lovers, Benedick and Beatrice. A closer...

This book examines laughter in the Shakespearean theatre in the context of a cultural history of early modern laughter. It is the first study to focus on laughter, not comedy, arguing that since the early modern period a paradigm shift has taken place in our attitudes to laughter and investigates the role Shakespeare played in this connection.