This work includes the Comedies with Introductions by Judith Buchanan. These Comedies are among the best loved of Shakespeare's plays. In each a problem emerges, is then intensified to a point of maximum confusion and potential upset, before the chaos is resolved, however improbably, into general goodwill and a spate of marriages. The triumph of these plays lies in the way they mingle humorous stage business and dexterous word play with a more serious study of identity, gender, dreaming, the meaning of love, even of the theatre itself. They reassure us that with all its faults, the world will always in the end be redeemable.It also includes the Tragedies with Introductions by Emma Smith - 'Not for an age but for all time.' So Ben Jonson established what we now take for granted: Shakespeare's unique place among the world's great authors.