Compounding Errors | Iv
IV
This sense of comedic resolution as a "fitting together" of contraries—and the discovery of how deeply they may answer each other—can be said to describe not only Shakespeare's attraction to a particular kind of story, but a preoccupation and a sensibility that manifests itself at all levels of his writing. From his consistent attention to erotic experience (both hetero- and homo-), to his predilection for exploiting the unclassical indecorums of the Elizabethan stage, to his notably dense and paradoxical metaphoric language, his impulse is to discover a figurative complement, to push apparent difference towards some deeper reciprocal unity, sometimes imagined beyond language itself, as in "The Phoenix and the Turtle." Consider, for instance, the large number of phrases that condense crucial moments of entire plays in a stark and baffling paradox that demands to be understood, and, even more surprisingly, that we think we can and do understand: "Mine own and...
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