The Comedy of Errors (Vol. 34) | Ruth Nevo (essay date 1980)
Ruth Nevo (essay date 1980)
SOURCE: "My Glass and Not My Brother," in Comic Transformations in Shakespeare, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1980, pp. 22-36.
[In this excerpt, Nevo analyzes The Comedy of Errors as a play that contains all the elements that mark Shakespeare's mature comedy.]
If it were not so funny, Shakespeare's first comedy would read like a schizophrenic nightmare: identities are lost, split, engulfed, hallucinated, imploded.1 Apparently solid citizens (solid at least to themselves) suffer "ontological uncertainty" in acute forms, wandering about unrecognized by all they encounter. During this chapter of accidents servants are subjected to assault and battery upon their persons and masters are subjected to the severest undermining of their sense of their own identity. A respectable citizen is shut out of his own house by his own wife and servants, abused by his merchant associates, arrested on charges of falsehood,...
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