This play has been popular on the stage during the last three centuries and has proved itself admirably suited to adaptation as pure farce and musical spectacle.

Professor Dorsch's account of staging pays special attention to the earliest known performance at Gray's Inn Hall during the Christmas revels of 1594.

His full discussion of the classical and romance elements of the sources is followed by sections on characterisation and language which reveal the variety of pace and diction in the play, Shakespeare's metrical versatility and his use of imagery.