The Comedy of Errors
The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare's early
plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major
part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to
puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors (along with The Tempest) is one of
only two of Shakespeare's plays to observe the Unity of Time (classical
unities). It has been adapted for opera, stage, screen and musical theatre
numerous times worldwide.
The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical
twins that were accidentally separated at birth (Shakespeare was father to one
pair of twins). Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse,
arrive in Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers,
Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the Syracusans
encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps
based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the
arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and false accusations of infidelity, theft,
madness, and demonic possession.
For centuries, scholars have found little thematic depth in
The Comedy of Errors. Harold Bloom, however, wrote that it "reveals
Shakespeare's magnificence at the art of comedy". The play seemed merely
to be little more than a modernised adaptation of Menaechmi by Plautus. The
play was not a particular favourite on the eighteenth century stage because it
failed to offer the kind of striking roles that actors such as David Garrick
could exploit.
The play was particularly notable in one respect. In the
earlier eighteenth century some critics followed the French critical standard
of judging the quality of a play by its adherence to the classical unities, as
specified by Aristotle in the fourth century BC. The Comedy of Errors and The
Tempest were the only two of Shakespeare's plays to comply with this somewhat
artificial standard.
Law professor Eric Heinze, however, claims that particularly
notable in the play is a series of social relationships, which is in crisis as
it sheds its feudal forms, and confronts the market forces of early modern
Europe.
Two early performances of The Comedy of Errors are recorded.
One, by "a company of base and common fellows," is mentioned in the
Gesta Grayorum ("The Deeds of Gray") as having occurred in Gray's Inn
Hall on 28 December 1594. The second also took place on "Innocents' Day,"
but ten years later: 28 December 1604, at Court.
In the Yes Prime Minister episode "The Patron of the
Arts" Prime Minister James Hacker complains that "they [the National
Theatre] set The Comedy of Errors in Number 10 Downing Street".
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