extending identity confusion to gender. The sister disguises herself as a man
introducing a motif that Carlo Goldoni picked up in The Servant of Two Masters
(1746). Here Truffaldino causes much disorder, playing a double role as servant
of two masters to augment his income, while Beatrice slips into her brother
Federigo’s identity to make the story of promised and cancelled marriages even
more perplexing.
These plays deal with funny aspects of mistaken identity, creating scenes in
which characters with a certain intent conceal their identities or are mistaken by
chance. The course of events, these being comedies, sometimes lands them in
unexpected troubles, but they do not lose control of their true identity. However,
there is no dearth of dramas devoted to the more sinister facets of self-identity.
Split identity
You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.These dark lines encapsulate a major theme of Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s drama
Faust (1808). Its protagonist, an alchemist by the name of Johann Georg Faust,
in an attempt to overcome the limits of human understanding, concludes a pact
with Mephistopheles, forsaking his soul for boundless knowledge. In the end,
Faust is no match for the devil, and his quest for salvation in the absence of a
soul to be salvaged ends in disaster. Faust’s name is appropriately ambiguous. In
German, Faust (‘fist’) stands for wrath and brute force; in Latin, however,
faustus means ‘happy’. Pursuing happiness with brute force is destined to fail.
Faust makes us see that thirst for knowledge and humility vis-à-vis the infinite
universe cannot be happily separated, that renouncing one’s soul is no method of
forcing one’s luck.
Faust’s torn self is a literary archetype that inspired many dramatists, poets, and
composers to adapt various elements of the story in their own interpretations.
The discordant sides of the protagonist’s identity, swayed between good and evil,
between noble goals and dubious means, between hubris and trust in God, unite
them all.