Introduction: Thinking about comedy
Something to make us laugh?
The world brought down to earth
Summing up before moving on
Chapter 1. Reading comedy
'What kind of world is this?'
Formal and textual elements
Entering the world of comedy
Chapter 2. Comedy's foundations
Back to (what we call) the beginning
The fingerprints of Old Comedy
Our old friend, New Comedy
New Comedy in Roman hands
Chapter 3. Comedy's devices
Towards a study of comic traits
Humour and the dramatic text
Mine the gap: the reader's view
Mine the gap: the spectator's access
Chapter 4. Comedy in the flesh
Comedy for the stage of the mind
Performance fabric and outlining
Reading comic bodies and voices
Reading comic character (mask)
Reading comic dialogue (lazzi)
Chapter 5. Comedy's range
Dramatic texture and the comic
The deadly serious treated playfully
The comic beyond the 'realistic'
Comic latitude in production
Chapter 6. Comedy and society
