Cheatham, George. "Imagination, Madness, and Magic: The Taming of the Shrew as Romantic Comedy." Iowa State Journal of Research 59, No. 3 (February 1985): 221-32.

Argues that The Taming of the Shrew resembles Shakespeare's later comedies, like A Midsummer Night's Dream, in that it employs the metaphors of role-playing, madness, and magic to examine the transformative power of love.

Kahn, Coppélia. "'The Savage Yoke': Cuckoldry and Marriage." In Man's Estate: Masculine Identity in Shakespeare, pp. 119-50. University of California Press, 1981.

Analyzes the theme of the married man as cuckold in Shakespeare's plays. Kahn first reviews the motifs associated with cuckoldry in Shakespeare's work and then studies cuckoldry as a "male fantasy of female betrayal" in many of the plays.

Leggati, Alexander. Shakespeare's Comedy of Love. London: Methuen, 1974, 272 p.

Studies the "internal variety" in Shakespeare's romantic comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Taming of the Shrew, Love's Labour's Lost, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night), focusing on the tension within each play between variances of style or dramatic idiom. Maintains that while certain plot devices and themes such as romantic love appear in each of the plays, they are never treated in the same manner.

Lindenbaum, Peter. "Time, Sexual Love, and the Uses of Pastoral in The Winter's Tale." Modern Language Quarterly 33, No. 1 (March 1972): 3-22.

Examines the pastoral elements of the play, noting how pastoral life in Bohemia offers a sharp contrast to the world of the Sicilian court. Lindenbaum argues that although Perdita is presented as an idealized figure of the pastoral world and its values, the pastoral world itself is not romanticized. Lindenbaum maintains that Shakespeare presents a view of time as destructive, but through his depiction of pastoral life and Perdita's attitude toward life the audience is able to accept such a view of time in a calm, perhaps even an enthusiastic manner.

MacCary, W. Thomas. Friends and Lovers: The Phenomenology of Desire in Shakespearean Comedy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, 264 p.

Studies ten of Shakespeare's comedies (The Comedy of Errors, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, The Taming of the Shrew, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, the Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, The Winter's Tale) and maintains that in them, Shakespeare offers an examination of "the orientation of desire and its constitution of individual identity." As such an exploration, MacCary argues, these plays may be compared to Plato's dialogues and Freud's metapsychological essays.

Ranald, Margaret Loftus. " 'As Marriage Binds, and Blood Breaks': English Marriage and Shakespeare." Shakespeare Quarterly 30, No. 1 (Winter 1979): 68-81.

Stresses that knowledge of the matrimonial laws in Shakespeare's England can aid in one's understanding of the action of many of his plays. Ranald examines several plays that deal with particular facets of matrimonial legalities and demonstrates the significance of marriage in Shakespeare's comedies, poems, and tragedies.

Summers, Joseph H. Dreams of Love and Power: On Shakespeare's Plays. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984, 161 p.

Maintains that the plays analyzed (A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale, Hamlet, Measure for Measure, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest), share a common trait: the emphasis on the dreams (hopes, fears, desires) of the characters, and that as audience members, we become involved in the dramas in our perception of the relationship between those dreams and our own. The chapters on A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Winter's Tale and Antony and Cleopatra focus in particular on the characters' dreams of love.

VanDenBerg, Kent. "Theatrical Fiction and the Reality of Love in As You Like It" PMLA 90, No. 5 (October 1975): 885-93.

Extends the critical approach to the play as self-reflective by arguing that Shakespeare's emphasis of the artificial nature of theatrical fiction is intended to make that artifice "a comprehensive metaphor of love." As You Like It, VanDenBerg explains, reflects itself in order to symbolize a reality that extends beyond itself.