SOURCE: Cacicedo, Alberto. “‘A Formal Man Again’: Physiological Humours in The Comedy of Errors.” The Upstart Crow 11 (1991): 24-38.

In the following essay, Cacicedo argues that the language of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors can be read not only in psychoanalytic terms, as most critics have done, but also in relation to the comedy of humors.

Recent readings of Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors take as their starting point the psychological text most clearly inscribed in Syracusan Antipholus' first soliloquy:¹

I to the world am like a drop of water That in the ocean seeks 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. 

(I. ii. 35-40)²

The text underscores the double-edged character of Antipholus' search. He seeks to rediscover relationships in order to find his own identity, and...