001460399 001__ 1460399 001460399 005__ 20240828130807.0 001460399 0247_ $$2doi$$a10.58090/usi.1460399 001460399 037__ $$aIR 001460399 041__ $$aeng 001460399 245__ $$aThe City and the Sea: Trickster Geographies in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors 001460399 260__ $$bIndiana College English Association 001460399 269__ $$a2023 001460399 520__ $$aThe premise of William Shakespeare’s <em>The Comedy of Errors</em> can be described in a single far-fetched sentence: Two sets of identically dressed twins, identically named and even identically freckled, somehow wander around the same town without noticing each other. Mistaken identities such as these are common in the major forebears of Shakespeare’s comedy—in Roman New Comedy (especially the works of Plautus) and the Italian <em>commedia dell arte</em> of the sixteenth century—but a key difference is that deception in classical comedy often relied on trickster figures, while the two sets of twins in <em>Errors</em> are accidental deceivers, tricky only because they are a physical paradox. The twins themselves attribute the confusion surrounding them to physical locations: the magical Mediterranean and the ancient and occult town of Ephesus. In this paper, I make a similar argument, attributing the confusion of <em>Errors</em> not to trickster figures but to “trickster geographies.” The trickery that drives the play’s plotline emanates from the places the twins inhabit, and Shakespeare characterizes these settings—in particular, the Mediterranean Sea and the city of Ephesus—as magical, liminal, and beguiling. 001460399 7001_ $$aMonica O'Neil$$uUniversity of Southern Indiana 001460399 773__ $$tIndiana English 001460399 8564_ $$9d65dd5cb-1876-4576-a9ae-d93e1766736b$$s168810$$uhttps://library.usi.edu/record/1460399/files/SOAR%20Author%20Agreement%20%28M.%20O%27Neil%29%20.pdf 001460399 8564_ $$990bc9122-11d7-4482-8176-2ef70e25be9f$$s483753$$uhttps://library.usi.edu/record/1460399/files/%28O%27Neil%29%20The%20City%20and%20the%20Sea%20Trickster%20Geographies%20in%20Shakespear%27s%20Comedy%20of%20Errors.pdf 001460399 909CO $$ooai:library.usi.edu:1460399$$pGLOBAL_SET 001460399 980__ $$aINDIANA