The Comedy of Errors - William Shakespeare, scene-by-scene summary

The Comedy of Errors 1




The Comedy of Errors
Contents
The Comedy of Errors............................................................................................................................1
Lecture Notes....................................................................................................................................1
Summary............................................................................................................................................2
characters......................................................................................................................................2
quick plot overview........................................................................................................................3
about.............................................................................................................................................3
actual play [general tw: beating/random violence].......................................................................3

Lecture Notes
confusion
This play is confusing, even the printer of the text got confused. The Folio is, on some occasions, very
confusing. The printer tries to distinguish between the Dromios and Antipholi 1, but it is very
inconsistent. The twins have the same name because the father decides to commemorate the lost
son by giving his surviving son the same name. In performance, it has to be clear. Dramatic irony
works because the audience has more knowledge than the characters.

How do you portray twins? You can’t always actually have two pairs of twins playing the characters.
Often productions will choose to have similar costumes. Costuming can really make it all.

Antipholus2 is very confused, his once pretty perfect life collapses within one day: he is locked out of
his own home, his servant is acting weird, people want money from him, he gets arrested… He, as
far as we know, doesn’t even know he has a twin, since he was taken from his mother at a very
young age and adopted by the Duke’s uncle. He is like a cartoon character, who keeps getting in
worse and worse situation whilst still surviving. Meanwhile, Antipholus knows he is looking for his
twin yet is still oblivious enough to get dragged into the whole confusion.

background & sources
A thousand lines in Shakespeare take roughly an hour. The Comedy of Errors, with its 1787 lines,
takes about an hour and a half. You only need 8 actors, since a lot of doubling is possible. We have a
record of a performance in 1594.

The play continued to be popular. In the late 17 th early 18th century an edited edition was written:
The Twins, or, Which is Which? A Farce in Three Acts where the bawdy jokes are taken out.

All boys who could read and write would know their Plautus, as well as Saint Paul’s letters. This play
is based on Plautus’ Menaechmi, Adriana & Luciana’s dialogue about the position of wives in
marriage is very similar to Ephesians 5:22-30 as well as Colossians 3:18-9. In Acts, Ephesus is linked
to sorcery, hence Antipholus and Dromio’s assumption that the confusion is caused by magic.



1
Antipholuses?
2
I have colour-coded the twins for clarity’s sake, red for Ephesus and purple for Sycaruse.

, The Comedy of Errors 2


Summary
characters
 Ephesus
o Solinus
 Duke of Ephesus
o Abbess/Emilia of Babylon
 Egeon’s wife, mother of the twins
o Antipholus of Ephesus3
 Son of Emilia & Egeon, twin.
o Adriana
 Wife of Antipholus of Ephesus
o Luciana
 Adriana’s sister
o Nell/Luce
 Kitchen maid to Adriana
o Dromio of Ephesus
 Bondsman of Antipholus of Ephesus, twin.
 Syracuse
o Egeon
 A merchant from Syracuse, father of the twins
o Antipholus of Syracuse
 Son of Emilia & Egeon, raised by Egeon, twin.
o Dromio of Syracuse
 Bondsman of Antipholus of Sycarus, twin.
o First merchant
 Friend to Antipholus of Syracuse
 Other
o Balthasar
 Merchant
o Angelo
 Goldsmith
o Courtesan
o Second merchant
 Angelo owes him money
o Doctor Pinch
 A conjuring schoolmaster
o Gaoler
o Headsman
o Officers
o Other attendants




3
I have colour-coded the twins for clarity’s sake, red for Ephesus and purple for Sycaruse. I’m trying to mark
the names of the colour of the person they are, not the person the speaker thinks they are talking to.