Play of the Month: The Comedy of Errors

I just completed studying The Comedy of Errors, my ninth Shakespeare play. It is the shortest of Shakespeare’s plays, with only 1870 lines, compared to Hamlet, the longest with 4030 lines. It's among Shakespeare’s early works, reportedly premiered in 1592, but the play was not published until it appeared in the First Folio in 1623.

Set in the Greek city of Ephesus, The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two pairs of identical twins who, only a month after birth, are separated during a shipwreck. 33 years later, in search of their twin brothers 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.

The play is arguably the most farcical comedy of Shakespeare, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. This is the first time I have experienced in Shakespeare’s works slapstick, the type of humor best represented by Charlie Chaplin.

At the beginning, I was captivated by the narrative of Solinus (Duke of Ephesus) in modern English below, and pictured vividly the danger Aegeon (a merchant from Syracuse, father of the Antipholus twins) is in:

"Merchant of Syracuse, stop pleading. I'm not in the mood to violate our laws.  All this recent hostility and chaos is your resentful duke's fault. When our honest merchants don't have the money to pay their ransoms, he's been using his own strict laws to execute our honest merchants. So, we're not going to show any pity. Ever since the fatal civil wars between your unruly countrymen and our people, it's been decreed in parliaments both by the people of Syracuse and by us that no one will be allowed to enter the opposing town. And, what's more, if anyone born in Ephesus is seen in any markets or fairs in Syracuse, or if anyone born in Syracuse comes to the bay of Ephesus, he dies. In addition, the Duke takes possession of his goods unless a thousand marks are paid to lift the sentence and pay the ransom. Even at the highest rate, you can't be worth a hundred marks. So, by law, you are condemned to die."

Then, I was impressed by the lengthy account narrated by Aegeon, representing about a half of the lines of Act I, detailing how he, Aegeon, meets Aemilia and marries her; how they travel to Epidamnum, the place where he does business and where Aemilia gives birth to a pair of identical twins (Antipholus), and how they adopt another pair of identical twins (Dromio) born to a poor couple, on the same day and at the same lodging they stayed; how they set sail home and only to encounter a storm at sea. The ship sinks and he is rescued, with one of both pairs of twins in his arms, by a ship from Epidaurus, while Aemlia and the remaining one of both pairs of twins are rescued by another ship from Corinth. The family has been split ever since. Having searched his missing family members elsewhere in vain, now Aegeon risks being caught and sets foot in Ephesus to try his luck.

I find female characters in Shakespeare’s plays often overshadow their male counterparts, and this play is no exception. To this end, I love what Adriana says to Antipholus of Syracuse whom she mistakes as her husband Antipholus of Ephesus, in modern English below:

"Yes, yes, Antipholus, look confused and frown. Some other woman has gotten your affection. Apparently I am not Adriana, nor your wife. There was once a time when, without prompting, you would vow that no words could be music to your ear, no object could please your eye, no touch could be welcome to your hand, no meat could taste sweet to your mouth, unless I spoke, or looked, or touched, or carved the meat for you. How has it happened, my husband, oh, how has it happened that you are such a stranger to yourself? Your "self," I call it, a stranger to me, when I am indivisible, united as one with you, no better than the best part of you. Oh, don't tear yourself away from me! Just know, my love, that you can separate me from you without separating me from myself too as easily as you can splash a drop of water into the sea, and then take the drop back from the sea without gaining or losing water. How much it would pain you if you only heard a whisper that I was unfaithful, and that this body, so sacred to you, had been contaminated by lust! Wouldn't you spit at me and turn on me, and remind me that you were my husband, and tear the skin off my cheating forehead, and cut the wedding ring from my false hand, and break that ring with a vow to divorce me? I know you could, and therefore I want to see you do that. Now I'm filled with adulterous blood that's mingled with lustful crimes. If we two are one, and you act falsely to me, the poison of your flesh enters mine, and your sin is contagious. You'd better stay true to me, for I am ruined when you are dishonored."

The mishaps continued,  and I was amazed by what Luciana (Adriana's sister) says in modern English below, that, like what Adriana says earlier, confuses Antipholus of Syracuse, but also makes him fall in love with her instantly:

"Is it possible you've forgotten your duty as a husband? Will you let your love rot when it's just started flourishing? In the process of building this love, will you turn it into a ruin? If you married my sister for her money, then for the sake of her money, be kinder to her. Or if you're going to cheat on her, do it sneakily. Hide your true feelings so that my sister can't see it in your eyes. Don't talk about your shamelessness. Look loving, be warm, mask your disloyalty in kindness. Dress your sins as if they were virtues. Just present yourself sweetly, even if your heart is poisoned. Carry your evil thoughts like you were a holy saint. Just keep it to yourself. Why does she need to know? What kind of thief brags about what he's stolen? It's doubly wrong to stray from her in bed and then let her see it in your face at breakfast. Your shame doesn't need to be public if you do it right. Your hateful actions are doubled if you talk about them. Oh, poor women, just make us believe, since we're so blindly trusting, that you love us. Even if you're really in love with other women, make it look like you're still attached to us. We're totally dependent on you, and you can control us. So, dear brother, go to her again. Comfort my sister, cheer her up, call her your wife. It's not a sin to tell a white lie since your sweet flattery will vanquish her misery."

I was also intrigued by the lines of Dromio of Syracuse, which are not just full of puns and word play, but are also rich in cultural implications. In particular, I love his narrative describing how Antipholus of Ephesus is jailed, in modern English below:

"No. he's in limbo in Tartarus, that's worse than hell. A devil in a prison officer uniform has got him, a devil whose hard heart is closed and steely. He's a demon, evil, pitiless, and rough. He's a wolf; no, it's worse, he's wearing the uniform. He's a back-stabber, he arrests you by the shoulder, he forbids you to walk through alleys, and creeks, and narrow paths. He's a dog that flees from the prey but also tracks the prey by the smell of its foot. On Judgment Day, he'll be carrying the damned to hell."

Equally amusing and impressive to me is the lines of Dromio of Ephesus, in reply to blaming from his master Antipholus of Ephesus, in modern English below:

"I'm an ass, indeed. You can prove that from my long ears—I have served my master from the hour I was born until this moment, and I've had no reward from him but beatings. When I'm cold, he heats me with beating. When I am warm, he cools me with beating. I'm woken up by beatings when I go to sleep, stood up by beatings when I sit down, thrown out the door with beatings when I'm leaving the house, and welcomed back home with beatings when I return. No, I carry beatings on my shoulders like a beggar carries her baby, and I think when he's crippled me, I'll beg just like that from door to door."

Other cultural implications amazed me are those embedded by the narrative of Aemilia  when she counsels Adriana about the possible root causes of the madness of her husband, though still out of a mishap, in modern English below:

"And that's how the man went mad. The venom of a jealous woman's nagging has more poison in it than a mad dog's tooth. It sounds like he couldn't sleep because of your railing at him, so he went crazy. You say you poured your scoldings on his dinner like meat sauce. Meals accompanied by fighting lead to bad digestion. That's how he got this raging fever, and aren't fevers and fits of madness one and the same? You say all his relaxation time was ruined by your fights. Without time for sweet recreation, what's going to happen but moody and dull melancholy, which leads to grim and comfortless despair, and right after that a whole army of illnesses and humoral imbalances that put his life in danger. Any man or animal would go mad if he was disturbed while he was eating, sporting, and trying to get his much-needed sleep. The consequence is that your jealous fits have cost your husband his sanity."

Having read it through, I also learned that The Comedy of Errors, along with The Tempest, is the only two Shakespeare’s plays that conform with the so-called classical unities, also known as Aristotelian unities, or three unities--a prescriptive theory of drama that was introduced in Italy in the 16th century and was influential in the next three centuries. The three unities are: unity of action, unity of time, and unity of place.

Finally, I was surprised to learn that The Comedy of Errors was an adaptation by Shakespeare from Menaechmi, a play written by Titus Maccius Plautus (254 – 184 BC), a Roman playwright of the Old Latin period. His comedies are the earliest Latin literary works to have survived in their entirety. Apparently there's still so much we can learn by reading the immortal works authored by our ancestors centuries ago, or even millennia ago.