Indira Ghose: Shakespeare and Laughter. A Cultural History. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008. Pp. viii + 230. Cloth £ 55.00.

In its subtitle this book makes the considerable claim to set Shakespearean laughter in the context of a “cultural history of early modern laughter.” No doubt the author offers good components for such a cultural history. She discusses themes such as classical theories of laughter, medical theories, laughter and the Puritans, etc. Yet although she has “attempted to take the many overlapping meanings of the term laughter into account” (p. 5), we look in vain for a precise, workable theory of laughter, and research in this book sometimes could do with greater profundity. Ghose is of course justified in informing us about having excluded modern theories of laughter. Yet the basic fact, too often forgotten today, that humour cannot simply be equated with laughter, should not be left out of account, since it helps to define the complexity of Shakespearean “laughter” and of the Shakespearean Fool in particular

Seiten 422 - 423

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