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Albeit, my wrongs might make one wiser mad
Shakespeare went back to the basics with “The Comedy of Errors.” He returned to a source from his school days, Plautus’s Menaechmi, adding a pair of identical servants to double the chances for misidentity. He tightened the story by sticking to a unified story that, start to finish, takes place in less than six hours. He also cobbled ideas from St Paul, borrowing an incident from the Acts for the play’s location, and from the Letters to the Ephesians and Corinthians to sneak in a theme and lend some depth to otherwise stock characters.
What he came up with is a brilliantly funny farce and a perfect example of Situation Comedy. Typical of Shakespeare, many of the characters are those he pulled out of the stock drawer, but the ones he’s interested in (Antipholus of Syracuse and Lucetta) get more attention and are more fully developed.
As a farce, “The Comedy of Errors” doesn’t strain for gags from the start. Rather, the play opens with a long chunk of backstory, a function classically left to a Chorus. But by giving Egeon the job of setting up the story, Shakespeare compels the audience to feel empathy for the father. The tale of how the twins were separated not only explains the set up but also gets the audience involved and creates tension.
Tension is just as important in Comedy as it is in Tragedy. (Comedy might be considered a lesser form, but the requirements remain the same.) Comedy is all about tension and release. Jokes don’t get any simpler than a Knock-Knock, but tension is what gives the punch line its impact.
Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Nana.
Nana who?
Nana your business.
Who’s there?
Nana.
Nana who?
Nana your business.
Shakespeare builds the tension and the story with a typically leisurely pace. Like “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” all the major players don’t arrive until Act III. Unlike “Two Gentlemen,” Shakespeare gets us there more quickly by limiting the first two Acts to two scenes apiece. (“Two Gentlemen” takes ten scenes to get to Act III.) Yet, by the time Antipholus of Ephesus arrives, we know a great deal about him: his tragic infancy, his troubled marriage, and his obsession with work. The tension surrounding him is already built into the story. His reaction throughout the play is a series of escalating explosions; his release is through anger and his anger creates more tension for everybody else in the play.
Most of the play’s humor is derived from situations (or “Errors”) of misidentification. There is still some word play and bawdy humor. Nell’s “When, can you tell?” taunt at Dromio of Ephesus in Act III Scene 1 is a small penis joke, for instance. But all of the major characters get to play with a rhetorical device called Commoratio, descriptive repetition to make a single point. Shakespeare uses this technique for various effects throughout the play.
At the end of Act I, Antipholus of Syracuse establishes Ephesus’ magical reputation with:
They say this town is full of cozenage,
As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin...
As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such-like liberties of sin...
Lucetta admonishes Dromio of Antipholus with a short burst:
Dromio, thou drone, thou snail, thou slug, thou sot!
Adriana bitterly (shrewishly?) rails against her husband:
He is deformed, crooked, old and sere,
Ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.
Ill-faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind;
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.
Dromio of Syracuse excitedly takes his time to explain his master’s arrest:
No, he's in Tartar limbo, worse than hell.
A devil in an everlasting garment hath him;
One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel;
A fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough;
A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff;
A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that
countermands
The passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands;
A hound that runs counter and yet draws dryfoot well;
One that before the judgement carries poor souls to hell.
A devil in an everlasting garment hath him;
One whose hard heart is button'd up with steel;
A fiend, a fury, pitiless and rough;
A wolf, nay, worse, a fellow all in buff;
A back-friend, a shoulder-clapper, one that
countermands
The passages of alleys, creeks and narrow lands;
A hound that runs counter and yet draws dryfoot well;
One that before the judgement carries poor souls to hell.
The technique culminates with Antipholus of Ephesus’ description of Dr. Pinch:
They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain,
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man.
A mere anatomy, a mountebank,
A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller,
A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch,
A living dead man.
Shakespeare introduces the technique with wariness toward superstition; puts confusion, heartbreak and disaster in the middle; and ends it with contempt for an alleged exorcist. Thus, this technique, one with its own theme, runs parallel to the play.
Department of Nitpicking: If they’re twins are so alike “as could not be distinguished but by names,” why are they both named Antipholus? Plautus got around this by saying the surviving twin was rechristened after the one presumed dead. The source story, a standard to those educated in the English school system, would have been familiar enough to Elizabethan audiences.
Department of Nitpicking II: How come the Abbess, living in Epheseus, hasn’t figured out that Antipholus of Ephesues is her son? Well,... because she does. The audience, Elizabethan and since, has experienced the entire play with comparatively omniscient knowledge of the goings on. The Abbess is the ace up Shakespeare’s sleeve. When the authorities come to her, she has the answers. The Abbess wants the same thing Egeon and Antipholus of Syracuse have been searching for; the very thing Adrianna and Lucetta long for: the reunification of the family. The angry, self-absorbed merchant, Antipholus of Ephesueis the only one who needs to have things explained to him. She engineers that reunification. It’s one of the more subtle themes in the play. She’s an Abbess, presumed virginal. She’s Queen Elizabeth I.
Learning Points
The Comedy Stylings of St Paul: Nil, basically. But Shakespeare drew inspiration from the Acts of the Apostles and in Paul’s Letters to the Ephesians and to the Corinthians that play a significant role in this play. From the Acts, he borrowed the notion that Ephesus was people by conjurers and wizards. That idea explains Anipholus and Dromio of Syracuse’s reaction to the events that happen to them. From the Letter to the Ephesians, he explores St Paul’s counsel on the relationship between husbands and wives, between master and slaves. The Dromios seem naturally inclined to fidelity to their masters and Antipholus of Ephesus certainly sees himself as master over his wife. Yet, Antipholus of Syracuse submits himself to Lucetta’s wisdom. In the Letter to the Corinthians, Paul discusses the differences of opinion in that part of the Church, particularly with the distracting pagan worship of idols, ie money. Shakespeare didn’t use his knowledge of the Bible to preach, but to explore its teachings, finding new ideas and rounding the edges of his otherwise stock characters. Regardless of one’s religious leanings, the Bible remains a highly valuable and thought provoking reference.
Big Ideas in Small Places: Shakespeare seldom met an idea that didn’t lead him off on various tangents. In “Two Gentlemen of Verona,” he was overwhelmed with ideas, and it got him into trouble. He couldn’t figure out how to incorporate his idea into the story. In “The Comedy of Errors,” he subordinates the big ideas to the story. He’s smart enough to know that the big ideas aren’t appropriate to the piece he’s working on. He saves the big ideas for later.
Luciana’s DNA: Even in the land of stock characters, Shakespeare liked to rework those from previous plays. Luciana’s name and function is similar to Lucetta’s in “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” She acts as a sounding board for Adriana, but her back story is Julia’s. Luciana’s advice to Antipholus of Syracuse in Act III, Scene 2 echoes exactly what Julia experienced from Proteus’ behavior in “Two Gentlemen of Verona.”
Knit one, Comedy too: Shakespeare does a much better job of knitting comic set pieces into the fabric of the story. He foreshadows his intentions early, in Act I Scene 2, by having Antipholus of Syracuse confide to the Merchant:
A trusty villain, sir, that very oft,
When I am dull with care and melancholy,
Lightens my humour with his merry jests.
Thus, the audience more readily accepts the set piece exchanges between the Syracusians, (ie, their discussion of the merits of balding, and Nell the kitchen wench as a hefty geography project.) Antipholus of Syracuse is never the dupe of Dromio’s antics, the way Speed played Valentine and Proteus in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.”
They are as tied together in Ephesus as they were to the mast in the storm.
Next: Titus Andronicus*
*The Reduce Shakespeare Company says of this play, "Shakespeare as a young writer seems to have gone through a brief Quentin Tarantino phase." It should be read as an over the top spoof of highly stylized tragedy.
*The Reduce Shakespeare Company says of this play, "Shakespeare as a young writer seems to have gone through a brief Quentin Tarantino phase." It should be read as an over the top spoof of highly stylized tragedy.
Links of Note:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6Lq771TVm4 (An example of 20th Century Commoratio begins at 2:20.)
