The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare’s earlier plays. The first recorded performance was in December of 1594, though it may well have been written several years earlier. The London theatrical scene was established and continued to grow: Playwrights such as Marlowe and Lyly entrenched the main genres of tragedy and comedy respectively, and history plays were also appearing. As the theatrical culture developed, some plays complicated or straddled these genres, as becomes increasingly common in Shakespeare’s later canon. The Comedy of Errors, in contrast, states its intended genre in its title and clearly aligns with the template of an Elizabethan comedy, including a happy ending without serious consequences for any of the characters. The play uses both verbal and physical comedy through its wordplay and its farcical scenes.

The Comedy of Errors uses the popular trope of mistaken identity as the center of its plot and comedy. This trope was already found across many literary genres and appeared in other playhouse comedies, such as Lyly’s Galatea. Shakespeare uses it in many of his other comedies, though generally, these other examples include deliberate disguises. Examples include Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Twelfth Night, which, like The Comedy of Errors, also features twins.

The Comedy of Errors takes the mistaken identity trope to an extreme by using an even greater level of coincidence: There are not one but two sets of twins each with the same names, and nobody is intentionally tricking anyone else, so every character is a baffled victim of the comical mishaps, rather than any of them having insider knowledge. This situation creates constant dramatic irony as the audience always knows more than the characters, adding to the humor. Rather than focusing on plausibility, Shakespeare crafts a comically absurd situation in which the unlikeliness contributes to the joke, suggesting a conscious engagement with this trope.

As well as drawing on genre conventions, The Comedy of Errors also draws on conventions of structure and form which had developed as core parts of Elizabethan playhouse culture. The play uses a five-act structure to introduce its premise and characters, build pace and stakes, and reach a resolution through a dramatic denouement. Its long Act 4 is full of twists and action.

Shakespeare also works within theatrical convention in terms of form. Elizabethan plays generally used a mix of verse and prose, drawing on other literary conventions such as courtly lyric poetry. The central form of verse used in Elizabethan theatre was iambic pentameter, also found in the Shakespearean or English sonnet. The Comedy of Errors uses these forms in a number of ways to serve its plot and themes. 

Shakespeare uses verse to help convey heightened emotion through poeticizing the language, for example, in Adriana’s distressed monologues or Antipholus of Syracuse’s declaration of adoration for Luciana. However, he also uses it to support the comedic nature of the play: An unusually high proportion of the verse in The Comedy of Errors uses rhyme compared to his other plays. The use of rhyme gives even these heightened emotional moments a more light-hearted, comical undertone, with the serious feelings of the characters juxtaposed against the farcical nature of the mishaps responsible. The rhymes shift these speeches further away from realism and into the genre of a play, ensuring that the pathos of their situations does not undermine the comedy.

Shakespeare also uses prose selectively in the play. In Elizabethan theatre, prose was often used for people lower down in the social hierarchy, as it was seen as a less elevated way of speaking. It was also sometimes used for topics or humor considered to be low-brow, such as crude sexual jokes. The Comedy of Errors contains a high proportion of verse, and no characters speak exclusively in prose, placing them on an equal footing in their linguistic sophistication despite their unequal social status. The Dromios, the characters with the lowest social status, not only speak in verse most of the time but also produce much of the play’s comical wordplay: They are quick-witted, responding to the verbal prompts of those around them. The main chunk of prose is the scene between Dromio of Syracuse and Antipholus of Syracuse in which Dromio crudely describes the body of the kitchen maid, comparing her to various countries. Shakespeare emphasizes the coarseness of their humor and the participation of both master and servant, as both use prose.