1the fact of being who or what a person or thing is.
The subsequent definitions provided by the OED explain how identity is used as a mathematics term, so taking into consideration the limits to both my knowledge of math and your attention span, this first definition should suffice (you're welcome).
As if my aversion to numbers were not reason enough not to elaborate, I also like the simplicity and vagueness of this initial definition. I find it very telling that identity cannot be described more explicitly. Throughout the ages and facets of academia individuals have been obsessed with determining what identity is both on a personal and conceptual level. The fields of philosophy, psychology, literature, and theatre in particular attempt at length to answer existential questions such as "Who am I?", "Who are you?", and "What differentiates us each from one another and makes us the unique and special snowflakes we're so certain that we are?"
Now, obviously not even great minds such as Shakespeare's possess answers to such vast and daunting questions, but this has not stopped him and many others from making commendable efforts to determine the nature of identity. In studying Shakespeare's canon, one can gather that his definition would likely be as open-ended as the OED's. It is clear that Shakespeare views identity not as an autonomous unit that operates independently of the surrounding world, but as a fluid and dynamic entity with the potential to change drastically depending upon circumstance and company (with apologies to any firm supporters of the snowflake theory).
Shakespeare's notion of the self is shaped heavily by his involvement in the theatre. This is evident particularly in Jaques' frequently-quoted "All the world's a stage" speech from the second act of As You Like It, wherein Shakespeare explains that man's identity comes to fruition in the form of seven different roles he plays throughout his lifetime. The best of Shakespeare's characters have identities that are dynamic - like the rest of us, they are altered by the plots in which they are involved and the other characters with whom they share a stage.
Of course, the idea that identity is an ever-changing and intangible force is not exclusively Shakespeare's. Hundreds of years prior to Elizabeth's reign Buddhists were embracing the notion that there is no substantial self, and hundreds of years after the Bard's death poet Walt Whitman wrote the line "I contain multitudes" (Song of Myself, 1855). Fortunately, Shakespeare provides more than enough commentary on the malleable nature of identity within his early works, and it is these ideas I hope to explore and elaborate upon in this blog.
This post does a nice job of complicating the idea of identity and, in some ways, calling into question our modern notion of individuated (snow flake) autonomy. It's really interesting that the example you take from Shakespeare is Jacques' speech: what does identity have to do with performance? I do think that reading further down into the OED entry might have helped you make these questions a little more concrete. When was the term first used? Is it used in Shakespeare? Why or why not?
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