With examples drawn from an encyclopedic range of texts, this introductory chapter gives an overview of cowardice, which figures nowhere among the seven deadly sins, but has attracted much opprobrium, often expressed in the harshest conceivable terms. Most at home in comedies, where they at least achieve value as sources of amusement for those around them, cowards fare worst in romances, which uphold as an ideal courage pursued to a degree bordering on fanaticism. Though highly idiosyncratic in his thinking about most subjects, including cowardice, Søren Kierkegaard supplies some insights useful as a preliminary guide to the three cowards analyzed in the case studies making up the remainder of this volume: Parolles, Waller, and Hirsch.