Language, Magic, the Dromios, and The Comedy of Errors

Words and thoughts in The Comedy of Errors acquire magical agency, and the magical and fantastical also acquire the potential for truth. The play delves beyond its overt empiricism toward a substructure of fantasy and enchantment that conveys a sense of the "real" and that indicates a residual medievalism. The magical resonates, too, in expressions of copia and festivity. Instances of amplitude, doubleness, and repetition eddy uncannily through the play's scenic structure and language. The Dromios are the characters most sensitive to the magical, and, in their festivity, unruly speech, and responsiveness, they enhance the sense of magic's odd realism.