In these essays Northrop Frye addresses a question which preoccupied him throughout his long and distinguished career – the conception of comedy, particularly Shakespearean comedy, and its relation to human experience.

In most forms of comedy, and certainly in the New Comedy with which Shakespeare was concerned, the emphasis is on moving towards a climax in which the end incorporates the beginning. Such a climax is a vision of deliverance or expanded energy and freedom. Frye draws on the Aristotelian notion of reversal, or peripeteia, to analyse the three plays commonly known as the 'problem comedies': Measure for Measure, All's Well That Ends Well, and Troilus and Cressida, showing how they anticipate the romances of Shakespeare's final period.

Northrop Frye (1912-1991) was one of Canada's most distinguished men of letters. His first book, Fearful Symmetry, published in 1947, transformed the study of the poet William Blake, and over the next forty years he transformed the study of literature itself. Among his most influential books are Anatomy of Criticism (1957), The Educated Imagination (1963), The Bush Garden (1971), and The Great Code (1982). Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986) won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction. A professor at the University of Toronto, Frye gained an international reputation for his wide-reaching critical vision. He lectured at universities around the world and received many awards and honours, including thirty-six honorary degrees.

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A. C. Hamilton is Cappon Professor of English at Queen’s University.

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