37) Despite his clear-headed exploration of the analogous relationship between the anagram and the Renaissance fad for
anamorphism in the visual arts, Petronella settles for the tortuous and uninteresting diagnosis that Malvolio is "acting out the Lacanian mirror stage" and thus the "anagram is a conversion of one signifier into another signifier, and in this regard represents Lacanian 'lack.
Likewise, James Calderwood, "A Midsummer Night's Dream:
Anamorphism and Theseus' Dream," Shakespeare Quarterly 42 (1991): 409-30, interpreting the doubling in the forest of Theseus and Titania as the subconscious means by which Theseus relaxes rigid patriarchical controls, has written that fairyland itself "brings about the corrective realignments among the lovers that prepare for the multiple-marriage finale" (410).
