The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [Vol. 2 Of 9]

This volume gathers five of Shakespeare's most dazzling comedies, each a different flavor of love's delirium. "Much Ado About Nothing" delivers the sharpest wit in English literature Beatrice and Benedick trading insults that are clearly desperate confessions. "A Midsummer-Night's Dream" whisks us into a forest where fairies meddle with mortal hearts and four young lovers wake up thoroughly rearranged. "The Merchant of Venice" stings with its uncomfortable brilliance, a comedy that refuses to let audiences off the hook. "As You Like It" gives us Rosalind, arguably Shakespeare's most glorious creation, fleeing court for the forest in disguise and teaching us that love is both ridiculous and transcendent. "Love's Labour's Lost" revels in language itself, a play about words and the failure of words to capture what we mean. Together, these plays display a dramatist at the height of his powers, finding comedy in everything from moonlit confusion to anti-Semitic cruelty. They endure because they understand that love makes fools of us all and that wit, at its best, is a form of love.