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Egeon then believes that his son is standing right front of him, who really is, but Antipholus of Ephesus denies ever seeing the man. The Duke takes Egeon as a senile and crazed old man, so he calls for the Abbess. Then the Lady Abbess and Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse come in front of the Duke. When the duke saw the two Antipholuses and the two Dromios, both so exactly alike, he at once remembered the story Egeon had told him in the morning. Then the Lady Abbess made herself known to be the fond mother of the two Antipholus. When the fisherman took the eldest Antipholus and Dromio away from her, she entered a nunnery and soon became the Lady Abbess.

Then Antipholus of Ephesus offered the Duke the ransom money for his father?s life; but the Duke freely pardoned Egeon, and would not take the money. After a while Antioholus of Syracuse married the fair Luciana, the sister of his brother?s wife; and Egeon with his wife and sons, lived at Ephesus for many years.

Critical Commentary

The plot for the Comedy of Errors was not original. Shakespeare, like most other playwrights and authors of that time, based his work on another, earlier work. In Shakespeare?s case he chose one of Plautus?s most highly respected comedies, the Menaechmi. Significantly, he did not rely exclusively on rhymed couplets for his comedy. In fact half the play is in black verse, and exceptional accomplishment for a beginning playwright. (Kemp,3)

The plot was well known to the public of the time. The use of mistaken identities, as well as the confusion of twins, had long been popular in the Western Theater tradition. While Plautus had only one set of twins, Shakespeare has two, which makes this comedy increased to a great extent the possibility of confusion. He combines adventure, the comedy of human folly, romance, and suspense in a play that while not one of his masterpieces can be said to be both clever and original and still popular today. (O?Brian, 3)

As the plot gets underway even the secondary characters are unhappy. A constant theme in his first play. The idea of mastery and liberty in the Comedy of Errors, whether it be husband and wife or master and servant is not so important in itself as it is as part of a general context of man?s mastery over his or her own fate. Beginning with nature?s surrealist joke, Comedy of Errors for the most part light heatedly explores ways in which people are caught upon webs spun according to the laws of chance. This, of course, is one primal appeal of farce: natural repetition and duplication- when compounded to include individual themselves- threatening even their senses of identity can be frightening. (Gibbons, 7)

In the Comedy of Errors, the changes Shakespeare makes to his main source* Plautus, emphasizes the pathos of human capacity for error and man?s subjection to the power of fortune. The doubling the masters and servants results in situation identical twins puts in question the very idea of nature, as well as the human quest for self-knowledge. Shakespeare ensures that the audience knows more of the situation that the characters do, which increases the impression that the characters are victims, causing effects both ridiculous and pathetic. The wife Adriana declares her belief in the sanctity of marriage as a spiritual union, she and her husband has an identical twin, and that it is to this man a complete stranger, that she is declaring herself in dissoluble knit. The Meta physical paradox that man and wife are not one flesh is confronted by the physical paradox that man and brother are identically the same. The longing for the reunion that one twin feels for the other is contested with the frustration both husband and wife feel within the bonds of marriage. (Gibbons, 2)

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Kemp, Darnell. ?William Shakespeare.? Internet,

http://www.angelfire.com/mn/Bimmassaari/shakebio.html, 2 Feb. 1999.

Gibbons, Brian. ?Doubles and Likenesses-with-difference.? Internet,http://anglisti.uni-muenster.de/conn/gibbon61.htm, 2 Feb. 1999.

O?Brian, John. ?The Madness of Syracusan Antipholus.? Internet, http://unixg.uba.ca:7001/0/e-sources/emls/02-1/obrishak.html, 2 Feb. 1999.

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