In this early comedy Shakespeare plays with twins separated during a shipwreck. This of course is a trope that he will return to in Twelfth Night. But in A Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare uses two sets of identical twins. Here is a brief summary of the setup:
A merchant couple from Syracuse had twin boys, both named Antipholus. At the same time, a poor couple also had twin boys, and the merchant couple naturally purchased the 2nd set of twins to help ease the poverty of the poor couple as well as to provide servants for their own sons. These servant twins also, remarkably, have the same name Dromio.
The family—father, mother, twin one, twin two, servant twin one, and servant twin two—is in a shipwreck. The father , twin one, and servant twin one are saved together and return to Syracuse. Twin two and servant two are saved together and end up in Ephesus. The mother is separated from all of them.
The pair of twins were quite young—babes even—at the time of the shipwreck. The young Antipholus II and Dromio II know little if anything about their families. They probably don't even realize that they have twins somewhere in the world (but somehow, they did know their names and know which one is master and which one is servant).
Many years have passed and both Antipholus I and Antipholus II have established themselves as merchants. Antipholus I (from Syracuse, ) knows of his brother and sets out on a 7 year's voyage to try and find him. After years of searching, he and his servant Dromio I arrive in Ephesus, the home of Antipholus II and his servant Dromio II. Everywhere Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse go in Ephesus they are mistaken for their brothers, even by Antipholus of Ephesus's wife and servants. In fact, they look so much alike that the Antipholuses and Dromios mistake their own master or servant.
But once beyond this set of unlikely coincidences the audience is rewarded with a richly complex play. At every turn it forces the characters and the audience to question reality: when strangers greet you by name and friends, servants, spouses insist that you have done (or omitted to do) things that you have no memory of, sanity and reality become relative.
While the play is certainly funny—Shakespeare has gone to great lengths to set up a series of gags, and from the promo video for the play GRSF intends to play for laughs—a serious cloud hangs over the play as well. The series of mistaken identities will have very real consequences for characters including false imprisonment, the breakup of a marriage and even death. I expect that this weighted mirth will make this both a humorous and significant evening of theatre.
Visit the Great River Shakespeare Festival for schedules and tickets: grsf.org
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