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One of the most defining features of Shakespeare's works is their deeply nuanced characters, and the incredibly broad spectrum of emotions of which they are capable. These lifelike characters reveal the playwright's own intrinsic understanding of what it means to be human, and all the characteristics, flaws, and foibles therein. However, Shakespeare's works suggest that he viewed human emotion not as a solely internal product of their own identity, but also as existing in a dynamic and ongoing interaction with the external landscape.

For a better understanding of Shakespeare's vision of the interrelation of human emotion with the external environment, one need look no further than one of his earliest plays, The Comedy of Errors. Despite its comedic nature, and its heavy reliance upon absurd and ironic plot developments, Errors, like all of Shakespeare's plays, is indicative of his innate understanding of how people feel in a given situation, and why. Its characters undergo a series of highly unfortunate and comically disastrous events, and, understandably, experience a wide range of emotions in response.

The character of Syracusian Antipholus serves as a key example of powerful interplay of emotions in the play; from its outset, he proves to be a deeply reflective character, both in his internal musings, and on outward events, though in markedly different ways. For instance, it becomes evident that he feels disconnected from everyone around him, isolated by his uncertain origins and lack of a stable family, when an Ephesian merchant departs the scene, commending S. Antipholus to his "own content" (Errors I.ii.32-33). Though the latter has already proven himself to be someone with a strong and expressive personality through his fond description of Syracusian Dromio (I.ii.19-21), the true range of his emotion is revealed when the merchant departs:

He that commends me to mine own content,
Commends me to the thing I cannot get:
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), ah, lose myself
(I.ii.33-40).

It is in this dramatic soliloquy, perhaps the most poignant monologue of the work, that the audience is afforded the earliest example of S. Antipholus' deeply and powerfully emotional nature. Through the effective metaphor of searching for one drop of water in a vast ocean of myriad other drops,

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