‘Time’s Deformed Hand’: Sequence, Consequence, and Inconsequence in ‘The Comedy of Errors’

Salgādo, Gāmini; Muir, Kenneth

doi:10.1017/ccol0521085284.008

Cited by 3 publications

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“…As Gāmini Salgādo has pointed out, 'over a third of the play is taken up with narrating events that have already occurred before the audience's eyes'. 60 Yet the Duke, listening carefully, is able to see through many of the previous 'errors', such as the idea that Antipholus of Ephesus is mad, an accusation that the Duke dismisses quickly on the basis of what he hears: 'If he were mad, he would not plead so coldly' (5.1.273). But because the eyewitness accounts are still wildly contradictory, the Duke is unable to construct a coherent narrative to complete Egeon's own story from the first scene and arrives at the conclusion that all of them must be 'mated, or stark mad' (282).…”

Section: Comic Restorationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Profound farce

Winckler

2018

Cahiers Élisabéthains: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies

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As the genre of farce more generally, Shakespeare’s early farce The Comedy of Errors is often dismissed as superficial because of its farcical elements, or its farcical nature is downplayed by well-meaning critics. In this essay, I argue that it is precisely in its farcical superficiality that the play unfolds sceptical philosophical potential. Employing concepts developed by Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, I try to show how this farce, in comically unsettling the very foundations of human language, culture and identity, gestures at uncomfortable truths about the fundamental conventionality of human nature and society.

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Section: Comic Restorationmentioning

confidence: 99%