SOURCE: “‘Stigmatical in Making’: The Material Character of The Comedy of Errors,” in English Literary Renaissance, Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 81-112.

In the following essay, Lanier explores “the question of how the material conditions and practices of self-display in Elizabethan England relate to crises of self-display faced by Shakespeare’s characters,” by examining The Comedy of Errors.

'Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, Nor windy suspiration of forc'd breath, No, nor the fruitful river in the eye, Nor the dejected haviour of the visage, Together with all forms, moods, shapes of grief, That can denote me truly. These indeed seem, For they are actions that a man might play; But I have that within which passes show, These but the trappings and the suits of woe. 

(Hamlet 1.2.77-86)

What constitutes Shakespearean character? To the extent that Shakespeareans have continued—with...