The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors revolves around two sets of twins, and the comedic situations that arise from mistaken identities. To top this situation, one set of twins are masters to the other set of twins, who are their slaves. And to further this confusing situation, each set of twins have the same names. Neither set of twins has ever seen the other set of twins and knows nothing about them. Almost no one in the play knows that either set has an identical twin with an identical name. It does not take much imagination to see how the resulting confusion can be terribly comedic, and on the verge of tragic unless the confusion and mistaken identities are clear up, which of course happens just in time before the end of the play.

Whether Shakespeare intended it or not, he touched on a profound matter that is vital to our existence. Each of us depend daily on people recognizing us, remembering what we have said or done, as well as what we have said we are going to do. It frustrates us to no end when people cannot remember this, or worse, do not believe us. The same applies when people deny what we clearly remember what they have done or said, or what they said they were going to do. The frustration moves to rage when we believe others are deliberating changing these matters to simply advantage themselves and disadvantage us.

In fact, we might feel we are going insane if people did not recognize us or remember what we or they had said or done. It would be worse if they attributed to us an entire identity that in fact did not belong to us. Can you imagine if this happened, and you could not convince people otherwise, no matter how hard or how often you tried? On the other hand, we might actually like the new identity attributed to us, and simply go along with it. as happens for a while in the play.

We might even feel we have entered into a parallel universe if such a series of events happened to us. Parallel universes are currently a serious topic of discussion in our modern world due to certain anomalies within quantum physics. I will talk about the curious theories of parallel universes in another post. The point here is the uncertainty that would result from falling into a parallel universe where we could be confused for a twin version of ourselves over there. This concept was explored in a facinating Star Trek episode, "Mirror, Mirror."

Usually, and thankfully, most of the time, people recognize us, remember what we have said and done, as well as what we said we were going to do, and we reciprocate. When that goes wrong, it can give rise to comedy as Shakespeare shows us, or sometimes it can go worse, which I will explore in another post.

One final note, the BBC produced a television version of the Comedy of Errors play in 1983/1984, as part of a Complete Works of William Shakespeare series. I was surprised to see Roger Daltry of the Who play the part of the twin Dromios (at times with trick photography). I would have never imagined Roger Daltry as a Shakesperean actor, and he turned in a rather good performance.