Melissa Emerson Walter is an associate professor in the Department of English at University of the Fraser Valley.

• Illustrations          Acknowledgements         Introduction: Enclosure, Conversation, and Spaces of Authorship  1. Filomena’s Voice and Female Character in Shakespeare’s Early Italianate Comedies 2. Thinking Inside and Outside the Box: The Casket Test and Audience Response in The Merchant of Venice 3. The Trunk in Twelfth Night as Mobility Machine4. Novellesque Domesticity and Impossible Places in The Merry Wives of Windsor 5. Reforming Civility in Measure for Measure6. Rewriting the "ladies text": All’s Well that Ends Well7. Seeing as Reading and Retelling in Cymbeline     Conclusion          Appendix          Bibliography

"Walter’s book is an impressive achievement."- Rhodri Lewis, Princeton University (Times Literary Supplement) "This thoroughly researched book is both a critical assessment of the connection between the Italian novella and Shakespeare’s comedy and an analysis of Shakespeare’s creation of the female comic character."- Goran Stanivukovic, Saint Mary’s University (Renaissance and Reformation) "Melissa Walter’s The Italian Novella and Shakespeare’s Comic Heroines is useful reading for scholars and students interested in the relationship between Shakespeare’s comedies and the Italian novella tradition. The book is well structured and informed."- Flavia Palma, University of Verona (Journal of British Studies) "Theoretically engaged and full of insightful readings, this book makes a vital contribution to scholarship […] in the study of Shakespeare and early modern drama in general."- Pamela Allen Brown, University of Connecticut (Early Modern Women) "Walter deftly analyzes the divestment of women’s power that curtails women’s speech and agency, and foregrounds key moments of resistance wherein women’s voices are heard."- Alani Hicks-Bartlett, Brown University (Annali d’italianistica)