The Comedy of Errors (Vol. 77) - W. Thomas MacCary (essay date spring 1978)
W. Thomas MacCary (essay date spring 1978)
SOURCE: MacCary, W. Thomas. “The Comedy of Errors: A Different Kind of Comedy.” New Literary History 9, no. 3 (spring 1978): 525-36.
[In the following essay, MacCary presents a psychoanalytic and genre-based reading of The Comedy of Errors that emphasizes its classical comedic sources together with its narcissistic and egocentric themes.]
We say that the human being has originally two sexual objects: himself and the woman who tends him, and thereby we postulate a primary narcissism in everyone, which may in the long run manifest itself as dominating his object-choice.
Sigmund Freud, “On Narcissism: An Introduction”
Our comic tradition, since Menander, has been essentially romantic: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy wins girl and lives happily with her ever after. Much else, of course, happens in comedy from the fourth century b.c. to...
[The entire page is 5587 words long]
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