'The course of true love never did run smooth' – so says Lysander in _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, and for more than 2000 years the problems faced by young men and women fighting to find and keep an appropriate sexual partner have been a theatrical staple. This book explores the shapes that Romantic Comedy has assumed from Greek New Comedy via Shakespeare to the present. Changing social values have helped to redefine the genre's traditional hetero-normativity, while the recent trend towards more fluid casting has opened up many romantic comedies to radical reinterpretations. Organized chronologically to allow readers to trace the development of the form against changing societal norms, the book features a range of case studies of key works from the British tradition, including _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, _Twelfth Night_, Susanna Centlivre's _A Bold Stroke for a Wife, _Oliver Goldsmith's _She Stoops to Conquer,_ Stanley Houghton's _Hindle Wakes_, Noël Coward's _Private Lives_, Shelagh Delaney's _A Taste of Honey_, Ayub Khan-Din's _East is East_ and David Eldridge's _Beginning_.