Crisp opening paragraph, attempting to ‘place’ the play on the basis of a significant theme
Sample Essay: An Introduction to The Comedy of Errors
Condensed plot digest to suggest shape and pace of story
The Comedy of Errors is the first of Shakespeare's 'family reunion' comedies. The temporal fragility and underlying resilience of the family is a pervasive theme in the Shakespearean comic world, climaxing in the exquisite magic of The Winter's Tale. The consequences of Egeon's search for his lost sons, slaves and wife are condensed into the dramatic tightness of Exploration of title as lead into the play’s interest in mistaken identity one day, beginning with exposition (the frozen quality of the opening scene highlights the subsequent explosion into the very physical, kinetic world of farce) and ending appropriately with a cluster of joyful last-minute revelations, one of which - the identity of the Abbess - is a surprise even to the audience. Citation from The errors of the play's title are a complex series of mistaken identities created by the presence critic and endnote in one town, but unbeknown to each other, of two sets of identical (and identically named) reference twins. This unlikely expansion of a classical formula is fun for the audience but a nightmare for its victims. As Fisher T Fish has observed, ‘the essence of Shakespearean comedy is that privileged spectators take delight in the disasters that befall others’. 1 The bewildering experiences of the visiting Antipholus convince him that Ephesus is a hot-bed of sorcery and Specific verbal allusions deception. While he speculates on the nature of illusion ('Am I in earth, in heaven, or in hell?') his servant Dromio, obsessed with the fairy-tale terrors of 'goblins, owls, and sprites', is more concerned about being pinched 'black and blue', a plausible threat in a society where, for slaves at least, the most effective method of communication is apparently by hand. Logical signal
The irony of the play is that all these errors are innocent. There is no magic, no madness, and no real malice in Ephesus. On the contrary, this commercial centre is populated by the dullest pillars of Elizabethan respectability: merchants, goldsmiths, officers, schoolmasters, servants, and housewives. Nature alone has conspired to ridicule human complacency, for out of the sea, that Shakespearean symbol of the mysterious and uncontrollable, come two
Discussion of dramatic effect of twins
doppelgängers. There is nothing like the natural mimicry of twins to pull the plug on solemnity and dignity. As a consequence, every sphere of life - domestic, social, commercial and legal - is plunged into anarchy. Even at the very end, when all is known, the possibility of confusion lingers. Both the Duke ('Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which') and the Syracusan Dromio still have difficulty distinguishing Egeon's sons. The mayhem of the plot originates ultimately in the joyful, natural magic of childbirth. Shift to focus on effect of play’s brevity on characterisation and plot
The play's brevity (a mere 1800 lines) brings its own problems, for it inhibits development. Characters and episodes struggle within their limitations. While the plot calls for Adriana to be the typical nagging wife ('My wife is shrewish' is her husband's first comment on her) she is constantly slipping the leash to manifest touches of real feeling. Hearing that her supposed husband has been making advances, albeit delicate ones, towards her own sister, she erupts:
Logical signal He is deformed, crooked, old, and sere, Ill-fac'd, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere. (IV. ii. 19,20)
Indented quotation and reference
Yet this comic if mechanical thesaurus of insults is undermined by her confession, 'I think him better than I say ... My heart prays for him, though my tongue do curse'. And her later genuine distress at his apparent lunacy is touching indeed. Brief contrast between two Luciana, representing the traditional values of womanly obedience, transcends that role in the related characters tactful distinction she maintains between private criticism of and public loyalty to her sister. If Adriana is no shrew then she is no prig. Indeed, the entire cast is treated sympathetically, with the exception of Dr Pinch, who is subjected to the verbal and physical abuse which Shift from character to theme or action Shakespeare seems to reserve specially for the teaching profession.
As with character so with situation. The embryonic courtship between Antipholus of Syracuse and Luciana, simultaneously absurd and moving, is left unexplored. Even the final revelations receive short shrift, for farce allows little breathing space. The long-lost Antipholus brothers
Logical signal leading into conclusion
are silent, husband and wife exchange formalities, and only the Dromios seem fascinated by their mirror-images. There is none of the breath-taking wonder which accompanies the reunion of the Twelfth Night twins, or the religious ceremonial of Hermione's simulated resurrection in Contrast with other related The Winter's Tale. plays But despite this The Comedy of Errors has much to offer. A perfectly-paced farce, it alternates swiftly between pathos and comedy, between the seen and the reported. Hard on the heels of Antipholus's burgeoning romance with Luciana comes the distraught Dromio, whose off-stage encounter with a kitchen wench parodies his master's formal Petrarchan wooing. The greasy, globular and geographically extensive Dowsabel ('she is spherical ... I could find out
Glance at effective scene using clipped verbal detail
countries in her') is the more gloriously grotesque for being invisible. One only regrets Shakespeare's failure to dramatise Ephesian Antipholus's escape from the awful Dr Pinch, a feat worthy of Sexton Blake at his best: Reference to act, scene and line
And in a dark and dankish vault at home There left me and my man, both bound together; Till, gnawing with my teeth my bonds in sunder, I gained my freedom. (V. i. 247-50) Endnote giving bibliographical details of critical reference
Now that would have been worth seeing on stage!
1
Fisher T Fish, ‘Shylock and the Stock Exchange: Monetarism in Shakespeare’s Middle Comedies’, in Elizabethan and Other Essays, ed H Wharton and W G Bunter (Courtfield: Greyfriars Publishing House, 1997), p 27.