Robert Henke is Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, the author of Pastoral Transformations: Italian Tragicomedy and Shakespeare's Late Plays (1997) and Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell'Arte (2002). Eric Nicholson is a Lecturer at Syracuse University in Florence, where he teaches courses in comedy and theater. He has directed over twenty full-scale productions of plays by Shakespeare, Molière, Flaminio Scala, and others.