Category: The Comedy of Errors

… but truly two.’  Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

PTS read through:  Comedy of Errors, Act IV

In 2018, the notion of what it means to be a ‘man’ feels ever more opaque, with behaviours and attitudes being scrutinised as never before, perhaps.  As a gender, we sometimes appear confused about the path we ought to take to find a satisfying and yet socially acceptable direction or self-definition.

Maybe it was ever thus.

In yesterday’s post on Macbeth I touched upon the fragility of our hero’s notions of himself when his masculinity was challenged by his wife.  Macbeth is largely a play about what it means to be a man, but that’s way down the line in terms of my reading schedule.  Reading Act IV of Comedy of Errors felt like one of those non-comic interludes towards the end of plays like Much Ado About Nothing, and instead of laughing, I found myself thinking about what Antipholus (E) implies a ‘man’ should be.  It’s not an attractive picture …

Continue reading “PTS 08/048: Man is not truly one …”