Self as other

Several of my students in a Shakespeare elective have pointed to the way Shakespeare’s use of disguise and deception in comedy plays into his evangelical “lose life to find it” theme. Characters become more fully themselves by quite literally becoming other than themselves. Viola becomes Cesario, but through that otherness fulfills herself as Orsino’s bride – she becomes her master’s mistress. The transformations that take place in the wood of Midsummer first turn the lovers, and Bottom, into what they are not, but this is the means to self-realization.