`Knock me here soundly': Comic misprision and class consciousness in Shakespeare.

Examines three moments from three plays that stand as three variations on a familiar form of Shakesperean comic business: exchange between a social superior and his inferior wherein verbal misprision produces a comic impasse that momentarily renders the superior thwarted. Petruchio and Grumio in `The Taming of the Shrew'; Lorenzo and Launcelot in `The Merchant of Venice'; Flavius and Murellus and the workmen in `Julius Caesar.'