Shakespeares Comedy of Errors and Plautus Menaechmi and Amphitruo Ess

Shakespeares prank of Errors and Plautus Menaechmi and Amphitruo One of Shakespeares earliest plays (its first recorded performance in December 1594), The Comedy of Errors has frequently been dismissed as sheer farce, unrepresentative of the playwrights later efforts. While Errors may very well contain farcical elements, it is a complex, layered work that draws upon and reinterprets Plautine comedy. Shakespeare combines aspects of these Latin plays with biblical source material, in the main the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistle to the Ephesians. While Menaechmi is the most frequently cited classical source for Errors, Plautus Amphitruo is just as relevant an influence Shakespeares treatment of identity and its fragility is derived from this latter work. Of course, there are many other structural and thematic resonances between the three texts each of the plays, to varying degrees, deal with the issues of identity, violence and slavery, while displaying a keen sens ation of aspects of performativity, specifically the figure of the playwright, and the role of the audience. The structural similarities between Comedy of Errors and Plautus Menaechmi and Amphitruo are quite clear. In addition to adopting the traditional five-act social system, Shakespeare creates act divisions which comply with the Evanthian and Donatian definitions of comic structure (prologue, epitasis, protasis, catastrophe), and draws upon the classical stock of characters the senex, servus, parasitus, matrona and meretrix. Of course, this does not mean that Shakespeare is a slavish imitator of all things Plautine. While both of the Roman source plays for Errors begin with a musket ball prologue, set apart from the first act, Errors instead laun... ...s.) Plautus Five of his Plays, London Arthur L. Humphreys, 1914. Crewe, Jonathan V. God or The Good Physician The Rational Playwright in The Comedy of Errors, in Genre, XV (1/2), 1982, pp. 203-223. Dorsch, T.S (ed.) The Comedy of Errors, Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1988. Hall, Jonathan Anxious Pleasures Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State, London Associated University Presses, 1995 Hunt, Maurice Slavery, English Servitude, and The Comedy of Errors, in English Literary Renaissance, 27(1) 31-55, Winter 1997. Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare and Clasical Comedy The sour of Plautus and Terence, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1994. Riehle, Wolfgang Shakespeare, Plautus and the Humanist Tradition, Cambridge D.S Brewer, 1990. Segal, Erich (trans.) Plautus Three Comedies, New York and London Harper and Row, 1969.