ABSTRACT
In 1971 Richard Levin published a good book about Renaissance drama called The Multiple Plot.1 I still recommend it to my students as an illuminating analysis, although I do not share most of the critical values it takes for granted. I have never thought of it as remotely comic, or made any jokes about it. Now, however, Levin sees my book about Renaissance drama, called The Subject of Tragedy, as hilariously funny, along with some other books by colleagues whose work I find as illuminating as his own, and variously subtle, scholarly and challenging in addition. Why, I wonder. And why all these jokes, this comedy?
