Journal 24: Action, place, and time
Unity of Action: I feel that when reading A Comedy of Errors it becomes very difficult to remember what the actual plot of the play is. It is all too easy to get caught up in the comedy and humor of the situations at hand to rememeber what exactly what the characters are after. I feel that this play is wildly entertaining, however the play looses the plot midway and scrambles to get it back.
Unity of Place: This play did well adhering to this unity. The fact that the play takes place within the same city allows the audience to relax and enjoy the play rather than keep in mind what the location is and if it will quickly change, also how the location of a play influences a character and the situation and if the location was in constant flux it would create too much confusion. Shakespeare did a fine job keep the play within one location.
Unity of Time: This is one of the best parts about this play. How quickly everything happens within one day. It really keeps the situation real for the audience. Having to remember that this is all occuring within 24 hours just adds to the hilarity of each occuring situation. There is no way that this situation of mistaken identity could be kept up over the course of a week, it is far more entertaining and realistic (if that is possible for this play) to keep it short and within the restraints 24 hours. Shakespeare also did a fine job with the unity of time aspect.


I would have to agree with
I would have to agree with you particularly pertaining to your view on the unity of time. Shakespeare did a wonderful job with A comedy of Errors. In contrast, Richard II was quite confusing because it took place over a long time span and I don't think there was enough emphases on the time span in that play.
I Like...
I like the fact that you took each type of unity and discussed them individually. now the question is how ell they work with each other. Did the excellence of any individual unity cause another to not be as strong? I agree with you that does get incredibly confusing and hard to follow after a certain point, but do you think it bescuaes of the focus on the other two unities?
*Tina
How does it work indeed?
I do think that Shakespeare worked the place and time unities so well, that they carry along action. I think that if either one of these were lacking in anyway that the play would be ruined by lack of action or plot rather. It does seem that he was devoting his attention to place and time that it was inevitable that action would suffer even just a little, but I just want to stress that this is an incredibly funny play and the characters all satisfy what they were intended to do, entertain an audience! Veronica Sparks