The
Comedy of Errors Act 1 – "I to the world am like a drop of water
that in
the ocean seeks another drop…”
"I
to the world am like a drop of water
That
in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who,
falling there to find his fellow forth…
confounds
himself." (Act, 1, Sc. 2, Lines 35-38)
After,
for at least a year, bearing the ins and outs of people around him dying of the
plague, and suffering the hardship of getting no income from play performances
(even though starvation and the bills from Stratford-Upon-Avon would have been
paid for by some of the money that came in from Southampton, the likely patron
of his poems), Shakespeare and the people of London were ready for a good,
quick comedy.
‘The
Comedy of Errors’ is Shakespeare’s shortest play. It has the puns and word play
that Shakespeare had become so adept at using in his earliest comedies but
Shakespeare had also learnt so much more from writing History plays, narrative
poetry and reading pamphlets from the book market. His year of writing poetry
and not having his plays performed had strengthened and fine-tuned Shakespeare
as a writer. His verse is tighter, ‘mouth-crammed’ with poetic and dramatic
devices, some intuitive but some heavily influenced by the Italian commedia
dell arte. This has led some to claim that he went to Italy during 1593.
Fanciful and highly unlikely but it is obvious that he has either seen or read
com media pieces during this period or, more likely, heard detailed stories and
seen drunken unemployed actors reenact lazzi and sequences in the long
hours and nights spent in 1594 in one of the two makeshift ‘not-so-legal’
taverns in Bishopsgate.
The
play of 'The Comedy of Errors' is an old fashioned farce and one of the few of
his plays that observes Aristotle’s classical dramatic unities. Shakespeare is
a genius and we think of him as a genius because he is one who breaks the rules
but in 1594, he was a genius because he fulfilled the rules. The three dramatic
unities of Aristotle, if I remember correctly, are action (the drama has one
major plot or sequence of actions), place (the action happens in one place) and
time (the action of the drama happens over a single 24 hour period). The comedy
of 'The Comedy of Errors' relies ostensibly on mistaken identity and two sets
of identical twins that were separated at birth (Ancient Roman would have loved
this plot).
Now
let's see how good my precise skills are. In Ephesus (an Ancient Greek
city that exists only in Shakespeare’s imagination and in the mildew-ridden oak
walls of the Rose Theatre), Egeon is about to be executed by Solinus (Duke of
Ephesus) because he can’t pay the fine of one thousand marks which any
Syracusan found within the city walls of Ephesus must pay (gee, I got a lot
into one sentence there). Egeon welcomes death since he claims it will bring an
end to his woes.
“…
proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall,
And
by the doom of death end woes and all… “
(I.i.1-2)
(So
glad to use a quote since it saves so many words and moves the plot along). Of
course, after Shakespeare has given us a hit of a rhyming couplet like that,
Solinus’ curiosity gets the better of him and he asks Egeon to tell his story.
Egeon
tells the story of his prosperous life and marriage and how his loving wife
gave birth to identical twins on the same day as other twins were born.
“A
joyful mother of two goodly sons…
The
one so like the other…
That
very hour, and in the self-same inn,
A
meaner woman was delivered
Of
such a burden, male twins, both alike…”
Egeon,
being very fond of twins, bought the ‘lowly’ newborns, intending to have them
as servants for his twin sons (of course nowadays people buy other trendy gifts
for their twin sons such as twin goats in Somalia).
However,
on the return boat journey, a storm hits and their ship is wrecked
(Shakespeare, never living by the sea at any point in his life, will use this
device many times in his lifetime). Egeon’s wife strapped herself, with one of
her sons and one of the twin servants, to one of the ship’s masts. Being very
original in thought and action, Egeon did the same. A rock splits the parties
apart and Egeon and his crew go in one direction and his wife and her entourage
go in another. A Corinthian ship rescues Egeon’s mob while Egeon sees an Epidaurian
ship pick up his wife’s mob.
Of
course Egeon’s son, when he grows up, being bored with Egeon's stories and
puns, wants to find his mother and brother, so the son and the servant set off.
Egeon, being very original in thought and action, follows suit. The Duke,
being either bored or intrigued by Egeon's story, grants Egeon a day’s liberty
to see if he can raise the ransom funds to secure his release. Egeon hits the
town.
Same
Bat-town, same Bat-time. Egeon's son, Antipholus (oblivious to the fact that his
father is in the same town, monitoring his mobile phone), befriends Antipholus
who advises him to lie about where he comes from to avoid arrest. Antipholus,
who is a bit dim because of the genes he has inherited from Egeon, sends his
servant, Dromio, to an inn to get the money (fortuitously one thousand marks)
and his baggage (this is not meant as a metaphor or a pun). Antipholus, bemoans
the fact that he cannot find his brother. Well, his brother is in fact now a
prosperous citizen of (wait for this) the self same town of Ephesus, served by
his own Dromio of Ephesus. Antipholus of Ephesus is married to a woman named
Adriana, and he is a great favorite of Duke Solinus.
Confusion
proliferates. Dromio has mistaken this Antipholus for Antipholus of Ephesus,
and Antipholus S., in turn, mistakes this Dromio for his own servant. How did
an audience cope with this confusion (perhaps they arrived late from the
bear-baiting). Hencew, at this points states:
"I
to the world am like a drop of water
That
in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who,
falling there to find his fellow forth…
confounds
himself." (Act, 1, Sc. 2, Lines 35-38)
More bizarre confusion proliferates. Act 1 ends in madness.
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