Sitcoms in the Time of Shakespeare

by Andrew Michael Flynn

The theme of identity is integral to William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors because of the confusion that arises from various characters in the renowned play that do not necessarily appear as themselves at times. The theme of identity is so important in the time of Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth because social structure was rigid just as national pride was. During the period, the country of England was flourishing through an artisanal renaissance and those who contributed to it were seen as citizens to be relished as Shakespeare and his contributions were. For “Renaissance playwrights it was also significant, as it was an age when human identity became considerably relevant” (Martinez, 27).

Throughout The Comedy of Errors, identities are mistaken and humorous situations present themselves throughout the length of the storyline. The audience is in on the jokes, something that is wildly important in a comedy entertainment. This helps the enjoyment and keeps those watching the play affixed in a positive identity themselves. “In order that audience distinguished each twin, there is an object (a prop) in each play so that the audience in every moment knows who of them should have it” (Martinez, 24).

Consider any number of other popular works in modern entertainment of the last 40 years that touch on these themes: the protagonist who is not as they seem, the sitcom character who plays everyone for a different person only to reveal themselves in the final act, or even the on-the-nose farce The Big Lebowski where confusion and hilarity begin all because the antagonist’s goons took the protagonist’s rug (which really tied the room together!). Let it be clear that in the third of those examples that both the hero and villain of the story both shared the same last name, somewhat adjacent to their being two sets of characters in The Comedy of Errors that share the same names: Antipholus and Dromio.

The Comedy of Errors play surrounds two sets of twins that coincidentally have the same names, although they are from two different places. The first set of twins are the aforementioned Antipholus and Dromio (of Ephesus), while the second set of twins are of the same names but from Syracuse. Their respective birth decides who each of these characters are, even though a portion of who they truly are is decided by the treatment of other people in their respective lives. The play works in part as a commentary on Elizabethan culture and the social classes era. In Act 4, Scene 1 of The Comedy of Errors, the characters Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse argue. The manner in which Antipholus addresses Dromio is just one of many references that may be construed as commentary on this:

“I will debate this matter at more leisure
And teach your ears to list me with more heed.
To Adriana, villain, hie thee straight.
He gives a key.
Give her this key, and tell her in the desk
That’s covered o’er with Turkish tapestry
There is a purse of ducats. Let her send it.
Tell her I am arrested in the street,
And that shall bail me. Hie thee, slave. Begone.—
On, officer, to prison till it come.” (4.1.102-110)

Throughout the narrative of the play, the author asks the audience to ponder the question of just exactly where identity comes from: is it born with you, or it is acquired along your life by those you surround yourself with and the deeds/acts you carry out? It could be construed by the audience that The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s more existential plays, even though the material itself is meant to come off as farcical and lighter-hearted than some of his more serious fare. Existential in the sense that the very makeup of who someone could be questioned at any one point in their life, and the person being questioned may not exactly know what or who they are. Surely between then and now the circumstances and places are different, yet people of any century review themselves at some point in their lives. This can be for something as small as a self-confirmation of their direction, or it could be magnitudes larger in that some folks never truly find their place in the world and question their true purpose for being, their own identity.

With identity being the integral theme in The Comedy of Errors, supposedly looking into the era of Shakespeare and Elizabethan culture could prove beneficial to give breadth to context. Note though, that the culture of William Shakespeare’s time in the Elizabethan era was not the direct influence of his writing The Comedy of Errors. That direct influence was the work of Latin comedy and one of its authors, a Roman dramatist named Titus Maccius Plautus (Flores). Plautus wrote a play in the 1500s called The Manaechmi, which contains the same basic story as The Comedy of Errors, albeit with a few key changes to prove its own originality. Drawing inspiration from this, as well as The Bible, were the main influences for this work (Kinney).

Regarding the theme of identity in The Comedy of Errors, the characters exist to service the plot as opposed to each of them being filled out with more than a couple of dimensions each. This is not to say that the characters are flat, but this play is hardly literary fiction where more significant characterization and depth would be given to at least the main characters. Further, the literary element of setting of Ephesus over the timeframe of just one day shape The Comedy of Errors well considering its drive and overall content.

With The Comedy of Errors being one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, its creation was near the time that Queen Elizabeth came into rule (Stanford). Tensions were high with war footing against Spain as well as whom the Queen would marry. While Shakespeare may not have exactly written one of his first works for royalty, making this lighter-hearted and farcical contribution to then-current Elizabethan culture aimed to satisfy any willing audience (Maritxalar). Enjoying good humor alleviates worry and pain to some extent regardless of the era anyway.

The theme of identity is represented in Henry V because the title character’s self tries to become a king that can be viewed as a great and moral leader. In this play, his arc is revealed to understand exactly what duty is, even though he is also ruthless and not without his own shades of gray, as any actual person also has in their respective lives. His identity is further colored in by representing honor and duty as best that he can all the while eventually keeping his true feelings in check since his position as king ultimately dictates his behavior.

In today’s world, a person’s identity is wrapped tightly with their deeds and who they profess to be: good works, professional references, their Linked In profile, and all the rest that comprises a person’s life. In the perfect world that we do not live in, this would be much more than any pejorative labels that get thrown onto us, deserved or not. The raucous peanut galleries of the actual and virtual worlds are louder and more effective at times than we would like to admit, after all. Absent the keyboard heroes in their disparate mother’s basements, the characteristics of identity have proven with each new generation that they are an essential part of storytelling, almost regardless of the tale being woven on the filled pages before you. The following are mentions of two contemporary works where the theme of identity is at the vanguard.

Director Mike Nichols’ 1996 movie The Birdcage is an adaptation of the French play La Cage aux Folles (Poiret). The theme of identity is played with in order to mask one of the main characters for a large portion of the film. The character of Albert (Nathan Lane), who is actually married to Robin Williams’ Armand Goldman in the movie, dresses in drag to appear as Val Goldman’s (Dan Futterman) mother in front of the company of Val’s conservative soon-to-be in-laws, played by Gene Hackman and Dianne Weist. The conceit of the film is that Val hasn’t been honest with the latter two about who his two gay fathers really are, and the device of mistaken identity through dressing as the opposite gender is heightened from the fact that Val’s gay dads own and operate a drag club in the same building that they live in. The film’s tagline is both ironic and farcical, reading “Come as you are”. The comedy of the work aside, both The Birdcage and William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors present the question of who someone truly is at any one point in time, even if both Lane’s and Williams’ characters know exactly who they genuinely are inside their respective selves. 

The recent drama series Breaking Bad (Gilligan) had the main protagonist (Bryan Cranston’s Walter White) turn from an everyday family man into a raging and corrupt drug dealer. Throughout the series, Walter White gets in deeper with the criminal underground of his hometown of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and surrounding areas. When it is revealed in the final season that he actually enjoys it because of his high aptitude for both cooking high-grade methamphetamine and controlling criminal situations with aplomb, the masked identity of the everyday family man that he had been wearing his entire adult life comes off. Essentially, the scofflaw inside of him needed all things of dormancy, lung cancer, bottled rage, and some experience being a part of despicable acts so that he would ultimately become the criminal mastermind that seals the date of his character. While Breaking Bad works in the duality of a family and crime drama from the first episode, a parallel is drawn to William Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors in that both works ask the audience what makes up a person at any one point in their life, and who they are exactly can be questioned. This is regardless of true intentions, or what can corrupt their practices and trajectory along the way, too.

The theme of identity endures as it is a universal one for nearly all of storytelling, regardless of which century a scribe put pen to paper. Heightened exaggeration and emotion from character can be underscored: “All the more comical, therefore, is her great blaze of jealousy (lines 87 ff.) when the strange demeanour of Antipholus of Syracuse, mistaken for her husband, has been reported to her. At this juncture the device of mistaken identity is superbly used for comedy of character” (Elliott, 100).

Understanding the theme of identity in a particular character allows for exploration of the subtext that will hopefully be included with a written work. At this juncture, true desire and definition of ego percolate, allowing truth to burst forward and inform the audience effectively. “Such a display of technique provides conversation for afficionados and points to an audience, or Shakespeare’s anticipation Page 155 of an audience, trained to appreciate it in the schools, the universities, the Inns of Court, and the private theaters. His handling of his themes suggests the same kind of anticipation” (Weld, 154-155). Once the veil is off and the audience can get the best scope of the author’s intent, a larger appreciation is possible. Even if further research is needed, naturally: “Ever since its origins using masks in ancient Greece, drama has involved a central emphasis on suppression of the actor’s identity through devices such as dissimulation and disguise, with resultant confusions over identity” (White, 149).

The legacy of William Shakespeare endures into contemporary culture because we view his work as the original masterclass of the English language. His plays and poetry are the standard of structured storytelling built on the grit and culture of the Elizabethan era, with credit to his own influences from even further back. In his characters, audiences comprehend storylines and characters that they can get behind and possibly even use vicariously for their own lives: a projection from the stage into real life. The wise reader of any literature, especially Shakespeare, would be smart to be completely without hubris when making any predictions about the Bard’s legacy. Even if doing so garners social media attention in the form of valuable likes, retweets, and stitches (TikTok). A level of humility is needed to forecast just exactly where his work may be decades from now. In each generation, words and slang are added to the English language that either evolve it or smash it down into the trash compactor of history just a tad more. The technology of our modern era leads us to use emoji-speak as a type of symbolic extension of the English language, although emoji use itself can be largely understood if deconstructed with even moderate attention. A hundred years from now, the modern English speaker should still be able to recognize the works of William Shakespeare, even if each of his individual works are ever the more indecipherable and in its own disguise of a version of English that is not then understood as it once was. A necessary ambition will be needed to enjoy the heaping amount of work he gave to the world, the very same type of ambition that fueled Shakespeare’s own identity to fill up countless blank pages in the Elizabethan era.

###

Works Cited

Breaking Bad. Created by Vince Gilligan, AMC, 2008-13.

Elliott, G.R. “Weirdness in the Comedy of Errors.” University of Toronto Quarterly, vol. 9, no. 1, 1939, pp. 95–106., https://doi.org/10.3138/utq.9.1.95.

Flores, Jessica. “Comedy of Errors Shakespeare’s Sources.” Shakespeare Comes Alive!, 26 Dec. 2016, https://shakespearecomesalivefall2016.wordpress.com/comedy-of-errors-shakespeares-sources/.

Kinney, Arthur F. “A Modern Perspective: The Comedy of Errors.” Folger Shakespeare, https://shakespeare.folger.edu/shakespeares-works/the-comedy-of-errors/the-comedy-of-errors-a-modern-perspective/.

Maritxalar, Usua Martinez. “Classical Tradition in Elizabethan Theatre: The Influence of Latin Comedy on Shakespeare’s ‘Comedy of Errors’.” Universidad Del Pais Vasco , https://addi.ehu.es/bitstream/handle/10810/32171/TFG_Martinez%2CUsua.pdf?sequence=1.

Nichols, Mike, director. The Birdcage. MGM & United Artists, 1996.

Poiret, Jean. Las Cage aux Folles. Paris, France, 1973.

Stanford, Kathleen. “Comedy of Errors Cultural Topic.” Shakespeare Comes Alive!, 8 May 2016, https://sdsushakespearecomesalive.wordpress.com/comedy-errors-cultural-topic/.

Weld, John. Meaning in Comedy: Studies in Elizabethan Romantic Comedy. State University of New York Press, 1975.

White, R.S. Shakespeare’s Cinema of Love: A Study in Genre and Influence. Manchester University Press, 2016.

###