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Part I Greek 7 The Comedy Of Errors

The comedy of errors may possibly be the very first play Shakespeare wrote, perhaps even as early as 1589

It is a complete farce, and it is adapted froht Titus Maccius Plautus about 220 bc If we assume that the events in Plautus' play reflect the tih Plautus borrowed the plot from a still earlier Greek play) we can place the time a century and a half after that of Dionysius of Syracuse It is for that reason I place this play immediately after The Winter's Tale

Plautus' play Menaechmi tells of the comic misadventures of twin brothers separated at birth One searches for the other and when he reaches the town in which the second dwells, finds hiers who seem to know him There are constant mistakes and cross-purposes, to the confusion of everyone on the stage and to the delight of everyone in the audience

Shakespearethe twin brothers each a servant, with the servants twins as well The developments are all accident, all implausible, and-if well done-all funny

Merchant of Syracusa

The play begins seriously enough in Ephesus Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, appears onstage, with Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse The title "Duke of Ephesus" is as anachronistic as "Duke of Athens" (see page I-18) and with even less excuse, since there never was a Duchy of Ephesus in medieval times as there was, at least, a Duchy of Athens

There is hard feeling between Ephesus and Syracuse, to the point where natives of one are liable to execution if caught in the territory of the other The Syracusan, Egeon, caught in Ephesian territory, stands in danger of this cruel law The Duke says, obdurately:

Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more;

I ae our laws

- Act I, scene i, lines 3-4

In the tiically the scene of romantic comedy as were the Italian city-states in Shakespeare's own tiered in a golden afterglow

Syracuse was no longer as great as it had been under Dionysius It lived rather in the shadow of the growing Roman pohich it had allied itself in 270 bc

In the course of the Second Punic War, fought in Plautus'to lose, when the Carthaginian general Hannibal inflicted three spectacular defeats upon it between 218 and 216 bc Syracuse hastily switched to the Carthaginian side in order to be with the winner, but this proved to be a poor move

Roe to Syracuse and, after more than two years of warfare, took and sacked it in 212 bc Syracuse lost its independence forever Plautus may have written Menaechmi in the last decade of Syracusan independence, but even if he wrote after its fall, it is not hard to i it still as the important city-state it had been for the past five centuries

For the other city, Plautus did not use Ephesus (as Shakespeare does) but he could have Ephesus is a city on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor Asia Minor fell under the control of various Macedonian generals after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 bc, but individual cities flourished and retained considerable powers of local self-governraphically part of the kingdoamum, which made up the western third of the peninsula of Asia Minor The city was at the very peak of its wealth and its commercial prosperity

Of course, neither was in a position to carry on petty feuds with each other, and there is no historical basis for the opening situation in the play-but that is just to get the story

To Epidamnum

Duke Solinus points out that the penalty for being caught in Ephesian territory is a thousand eon must be executed

Egeon seems to think death will be a relief and the curious Duke asks why Egeon sighs and begins his tale In Syracuse, he had married a woman he loved:

With her I lived in joy, our wealth increased

By prosperous voyages I often made

To Epidamnum

- Act I, scene i, lines 38-41

Epidamnum (or Epidamnus) was a Greek city-state on what is now the coast of Albania; on the site, indeed, of Durres, Albania's chief port

Epidamnum is, actually, the other city used by Plautus, in place of Shakespeare's Ephesus, and in a way it is more suitable Epidamnum is three hundred ht suppose that the nearer neighbors two cities are, the more likely they are to quarrel

Epida the play not long after the end of the city's independence

Why did Shakespeare switch from Epidamnum to Ephesus? Perhaps because Ephesus was far more familiar to Christians Two centuries after Plautus' death it became one of the centers of the very early Christian church One of the letters in the New Testament attributed to St Paul is the Epistle to the Ephesians

Of Corinth

At one point, though, Egeon had had tostay at Epidamnuh she was nearly at the point of giving birth In Epidamnum she was delivered of twin sons in an inn where a lowborn woht the lowborn twins as slaves for his own sons

They then ht in a bad storm not far off Epidaeon's wife tied one child and one servant child to a seon tied the other child and the other servant child to another mast For security, they tied themselves to masts as well and waited for the ship to be driven to land

What's more, rescue seemed close:

The seas waxed calm, and we discovered

Two ships fro amain to us;

Of Corinth that, of Epidaurus this

- Act I, scene i, lines 91-93

Corinth was located on the narrow isthmus that connected the Peloponnesus to the rest of Greece This favored position gave it a footing that placed it on the sea, looking east toward Asia Minor and also looking west toward Italy Throughout Greece's history it remained one of its most important cities and one of its most prosperous parts In Plautus' lifetime it was the wealthiest city in Greece That prosperity was destroyed for a century when Roeneration after Plautus' death

Epidaurus was a Greek city-state on the eastern shores of the Peloponnesus, only twenty-five miles from Corinth It would spoil the effect of the story to have two ships come from such closely spaced cities

Fortunately, there is another Epidaurus (or, in this case, Epidaurum), which is located on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, soives us our picture The wrecked ship, not far fro approached by a ship fro fro from the south

Before the rescuers can reach the ship on which Egeon and his faeon, with one son and servant child, is picked up by the ship from Epidaurus; his wife, with the other son and servant child, is picked up by the ship from Corinth The two ships separate and the family is permanently split in two

farthest Greece

Egeon and his half of the family return to Syracuse, but the other half of the family has proceeded to soain

Egeon's son and his servant, once groant to try to find their twins They leave on the search, and after they are gone for a period of tieon sets out in his turn to find them:

Five summers have 1 spent in farthest Greece,

Roah the bounds of Asia,

And coasting homeward, came to Ephesus,

- Act I, scene i, lines 132-34

"Greece" had a broaderin ancient times than it has today, and "Asia" a narrower one Greece (or "Hellas" as the Greeks, or Hellenes, themselves called it) was the collection of the thousand cities of Greek-speaking people, whether those cities were located on the Greek peninsula proper or elsewhere From Massilia (the ris River on the east, all is "Greece" Egeon had thus been searching not just Greece proper but wherever the Greek tongue was spoken

As for Asia, this term was applied in Roman times (and in the New Testament, for instance) not to the entire Asian continent in the modern sense, but to the western half of Asia Minor only, the territory of the kingdo Asia Minor, would naturally return to Syracuse by way of Ephesus, the largest city of the region

The Duke is affected by the sad story, but insists that it is either a thousand marks or death

stay there, Dromio

Egeon and his listeners get off the stage and now the coincidences begin, for his son and servant, the very ones for who, have just landed in Ephesus; while his wife and other son and servant, for who, have been in Ephesus all the tiuesses it till the very end of the play, although that is the obvious and only way of explaining the extraordinary things that are to happen

Indeed, everyone is extraordinarily obtuse, for the ht the Syracusan son to Ephesus warns him:

Therefore, give out you are of Epidamnum,

Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate

This very day a Syracusian merchant

Is apprehended for arrival here,

- Act I, scene ii, lines 1-4

Does the son ask who this Syracusian (a countryht be? No, for if he does, the plot is ruined The events can only follow if no character in the play ever sees the plainest point, and the audience must co-operate and accept the obtuseness for the sake of its own pleasure

The son has a supply of money with hi at the inn where they are to stay:

Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host,

And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee;

- Act I, scene ii, lines 9-10

It is stated by Egeon, but not explained, that both servants bore the same name This is necessary since even if the twins' faces were alike, the confusion could only be complete if their names were alike too This identity in names passes the bounds of the credible, yet it iven up

The servants are both na "racecourse" It is appropriate, for all through the play each servant is sent racing, now on this errand, now on that, usually co not theirit

As for the masters, they are both na "opposed in balance" They are so alike, in other words, that if each were placed on the opposite end of a balance, the balance would remain unmoved

In order to identify them in the play, the masters have to be called "Antipholus of Syracuse" and "Antipholus of Ephesus" The servants are "Dromio of Syracuse" and "Dromio of Ephesus"

It is Antipholus of Syracuse who sends Dromio of Syracuse to the Centaur

as I am a Christian

Dromio of Syracuse runs off and Antipholus of Syracuse explains to the merchant that he is in search of his mother and twin brother Suddenly Dromio of Ephesus races on the scene His master, Antipholus of Ephesus, is afor his him to come home

Antipholus of Syracuse naturally wants to knohat ho about and why he hasn't stayed at the Centaur and what happened to the money Just as naturally, Dromio of Ephesus wants to knohat money

Now here is Antipholus of Syracusefor a twin brother with a twin-brother servant, and here co about an utterly inappropriate set of events Ought not Antipholus of Syracuse instantly suspect it as his servant's twin brotherhim for his oin brother?

Not at all The thought never occurs to Antipholus of Syracuse (or to Droh these cross-purposes multiply (Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus arefor their twins and so they are mentally unprepared to consider the twins' existence as explanation for the errors)

As the cross-purposes continue (and they require each set of twins to wear identical costumes, if any further multiplication of implausibility is required), Antipholus of Syracuse cries out:

Now, as I am a Christian, answer me,

In what safe place you have bestowed my money;