This essay offers a structural analysis of space in Shakespeare's plays. Taking his cue from Yuri Lotman's topological approach to plot organization, Andreas Mahler argues that Shakespeare achieves dramatic momentum by adding a third space to Lotman's concept of two spaces divided by a boundary transgressed at the outset. Both the comedy As You Like It and the tragedy King Lear start with a vertical organization of social space. Characters belonging to the "upper" level are thrust into the "lower" level, their eventual return being effected by a passage through an "enclave", a third space where characters can be temporarily "taken out of the game" (Mahler) in preparation for their social (comic or tragic) restitution—a dynamic that is significantly eroded in Hamlet.