This newly edited text of one of Shakespeare's most theatrically successful comedies offers a commentary and a critically aware introduction that discusses Shakespeare's social transformation of his source material.

It rethinks the attitudes to gender relations that underlie the comedy and determine its view of marriage, paying particular attention to the analysis of the play's minor characters, Allowing for the play's openness to re-interpretation by successive generations of readers and performers, Zitner provides a socially analytic stage history, advancing new views for the actor as much as for the critic.