Anterior Design: Presenting the Past in Richard II

Abstract

All identity formation is narcissistic, if we follow Lacan, so the plot device of identical twins makes evident and open for examination this basic phenomenon by splitting the self instead of reflecting it; how does one distinguish oneself from a nearly identical double? The plays that use this device, The Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, embed it in social worlds, thus foregrounding the larger question of social identity through local issues, such as service obligation, the repayment for a chain, courtship, etc. Latent in these plays is a more psychological disorientation; implicitly, the confusion of these twins reflects the construction and confusion of human identity more generally. Furthermore, because individual identity formation is always a kind of laboratory, metaphor, shadow or miniature version of national identity, the confusion of these twins at least potentially patterns forth the conception and the confusion of England. Within this context, Antipholus of Syracuse’s famous lines exploring his own paradoxical existence bear scrutiny:

I to the world am like a drop of water

That in the ocean seeks to find another drop,

Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,

Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself.

So I, to find a mother and a brother,

In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

(1.2.35–40)

It’s very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present.

Do you know what I mean? It’s awfully difficult.

—Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale¹