Erring and Straying Like Lost Sheep: The Winter’s Tale and The Comedy of Errors

Summary

It was while looking at double meanings in The Winter's Tale that I unexpectedly found myself being reminded of The Comedy of Errors; and what I took to be a side-track rapidly developed into the argument set down here. Close comparison of these two plays, obviously different in tone and widely separated in date, is unusual, yet when compared each play becomes a kind of commentary on the other's mode, and throws into particular relief a certain quality of bold extravagance combined with a certain elusiveness, as when more is meant than meets the ear.

Viewed from the perspective of The Comedy of Errors, one feature of The Winter's Tale stands out - a concern with twins, as a challenge to the idea of the self and a challenge to the exclusive union of man and wife. Together with this common concern are similar dramatic aims - although, due to the general development in Shakespeare's art, these may be less evident - focused on the dividing of an audience's attention so that an episode can be understood from two opposite points of view simultaneously: a whole plot can have a double meaning apparent to an audience but not to the characters, and the narrative can generate whole orders of subsidiary double meanings. Moreover, reversing the process and viewing The Comedy of Errors from the perspective of The Winter's Tale brings out, in the early play, an already fully fledged mastery of high-intensity equivocal design which yokes together opposites to teasing effect, the fully absorbed inheritance of More and Erasmus.