1. Introduction: the Saturnalian pattern. Through release to clarification. Shakespeare's route to festive comedy -- 2. Holiday custom and entertainment. The May game. The lord of misrule. Aristocratic entertainments -- 3. Misrule as comedy; comedy as misrule. License and lese majesty in Lincolnshire. The May game of Martin Marprelate -- 4. Prototypes of festive comed in a pageant entertainment: Summer's last will and testament. "What can be made of Summer's last will and testament?" Presenting the mirth of the occasion. Praise of folly: Bacchus and Falstaff. Festive abuse. "Go not yet away, bright soul of the sad year" -- 5. The folly of wit and masquerade in Love's labour's lost. "Lose our oaths to find ourselves." "Sport by sport o'erthrown." "A great feast of languages." Wit. Putting witty folly in its place. "When ... Then ..."-the seasonal songs -- 6. May games and metamorphoses on a midsummer night. The fond pageant. Bringing in summer to the bridal. Magic as imagination: the ironic wit. Moonlight and moonshine: the ironic burlesque. The sense of reality -- 7. The merchants and the Jew of Venice: wealth's communion and an intruder. making distinctions about the use of riches. Transcending reckoning at Belmont. Comical/menacing mechanism in Shylock. The community setting aside its machinery. Sharing in the grace of life -- 8. Rule and misrule in Henry IV. Mingling kings and clowns. Getting rid of bad luck by comedy. The trial of Carnival in Part two -- 9. The alliance of seriousness and levity in As you like it. The liberty of Arden. Counterstatements. "All nature in love mortal in folly" -- 10. Testing courtesy and humanity in Twelfth night. "A most extracting frenzy." "You are betroth'd both to a maid and a man." Liberty testing courtesy. Outside the garden gate -- Index
