Etymologies: getting to the root of it -- The song of the Kōmos -- The lyre and the phallus -- Aristophanes: the one and only? -- Failure and success -- The Birds: the uncensored fantasy -- Requiem for a genre? -- The comic catastrophe -- O Menander! O life! -- Plautus makes an entrance -- A Plautine problem play -- Terence: the African connection -- The mother-in-law of modern comedy -- Machiavelli: the comedy of evil -- Marlowe: Schade and Freude -- Shakespeare: errors and Erōs -- Twelfth night: dark clouds over Illyria -- Molière: the class of '68 -- The fox, the fops, and the factorum -- Comedy explodes -- Beckett: the death of comedy.