Though best remembered as a writer of pulse-pounding action-adventure novels, British author Anthony Hope's literary talent was wide-ranging. In the collection Comedies of Courtship, Hope tries his hand at the short romance story, and the result is a series of sweet tales of love interlaced with plenty of wit, shenanigans, and hijinks.

From The Two Gentlemen of Verona in the early 1590s to The Two Noble Kinsmen at the end of his career around 1614, Shakespeare wrote at least eighteen plays that can be called 'comedies': a far higher number than that for any other genre in which he wrote. So what is a Shakespearean comedy? We associate these plays with such themes as mistaken identities, happy marriages, and exuberant cross dressing, but how representative are these of the oeuvre