The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare’s earliest comedy and shortest surviving play, was inspired by a Roman comedy by Plautus (c. 254-184 BC) about mistaken identity involving a set of twins. Shakespeare added to the plot by introducing a second pair of identical twins – servants separated at birth with their respective masters. Servants get sent on wrong errands, jewelry is given to the wrong person, and husbands get locked out of their own homes.

Poor Antipholous and his servant Dromio: everywhere they go, they’re told they just left! Separated at birth, two sets of long-lost twins are loose in the same town. Mistaken identities make for hilarious complications The two sets of long-lost twins are loose in the same town, and mistaken identities make for hilarious complications until chaos gives way to clarity and mayhem to mirth; when brother is reunited with brother, lover with lover, and a town turned upside down is right-side up again.