Private Lives, a comedy of manners that focuses on a divorced couple who discover that they are honeymooning with their new spouses in the same hotel, is considered a prime example of the sophisticated comedies of Noлl Coward, one of the most-prominent dramatists of his era.

The Comedies of Machiavelli: The Women from Andros; the Mandrake; Clizia.
Though better known today as a political theorist than as a dramatist, Machiavelli secured his fame as a giant in the history of Italian comedy more than fifty years before Shakespeare's comedies delighted English-speaking audiences. This bilingual edition includes all three examples of Machiavelli's comedic art: sparkling translations of his farcical masterpiece, The Mandrake; of his version of Terence's The Woman From Andros; and of his Plautus-inspired Clizia -- works whose genre afforded Machiavelli a unique vehicle not only for entertaining audiences but for examining virtщ amid the twists and turns of fortuna.

This companion to Shakespeare’s comedies contains original essays on every comedy from The Two Gentlemen of Verona to Twelfth Night as well as twelve additional articles on such topics as the humoral body in Shakespearean comedy, Shakespeare’s comedies on film, Shakespeare’s relation to other comic writers of his time, Shakespeare’s cross-dressing comedies, and the geographies of Shakespearean comedy.