ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a range of examples in which characters' dialogue is the means of establishing where they are speaking that dialogue, or where they have come from, or where they are going. The usefulness of this means of establishing a fictional place for the onstage action, or for the proximate offstage place or places just out of sight of the audience behind the tiring house wall, derives from its simplicity. The Comedy of Errors is mostly set in various locations in the streets of Ephesus, but also has a number of scenes set inside Antipholus's house. Breakdown between nomination and inference, the means by which is a sense of place is established for these two poles of the spatial triangle. This does not hold, however, for the other pole: the more generic location of the 'town' and its various components are nominated with much greater frequency, in eight out of the eleven scenes.
