The Merry Wives of Windsor The Novel Falstaff in love says it all. Queen Bess was pleased! And why not! There was never a merrier story, full of more life and more real characters. Falstaff's merry boast that "I am not only witty in myself but the cause that wit is in other men," could just as well been said in Windsor as at the Boar's Head Tavern in London. This is one story everybody loves!

The Comedy of Errors The Novel. Imagine the young playwright's elation when this early farce brought down the house with rafter-shaking laughter. I refer those who look askance at plays involving doubles and mistaken identity to the very delightful 1988 farce, Big Business, with Bette Midler and Lilly Tomlin doubling up. We find a pure delight in seeing the players' happiness when the errors they have so farcically compounded are "corrected" in act five.

Measure for Measure The Novel. Once the reader accepts the difficult premise of Measure, and falls in with the story, her or she finds, besides the thought-provoking moral dilemmas, four intriguing love affairs, all developing simultaneously: Claudio and Juliet, whose affair starts it all, the irrepressible Lucio and the young Kate Keepdown, Angelo and the forsaken Mariana, and another great couple whose inevitable fate we find most satisfying. Although somewhat heavy in places, it's still a doozy!