The Comedy of Errors Garden

Audio guide transcript

[Shakespeare]: Here is the Comedy of Errors Garden.

[Interlocutor]: What plants does this play mention, Will Shakespeare?

[Shakespeare]: Not many. The play is not set in the forest or country, but in a city, Ephesus. We hear of grass, rushes, moss, and ivy; the elm, the brier, and the vine; nuts and cherries, and balsamum, and saffron.

[Interlocutor]: The Comedy of Errors is your first comedy.

[Shakespeare]: Yes. I took the story largely from the Roman play by Plautus, the Menaechmi; we read it in Latin when I was in grammar school. Greek and Roman plays obey rules which have come to be called the dramatic unities: the events of the play must come to pass in the course of a single day, all in the same place, and tell one tale. Well, well, in The Comedy of Errors we conformed ourselves to all this.

Only later did we make experiments in plays showing many places and many years, and telling several tales together.

[Interlocutor]: So The Comedy of Errors is set in one place, Ephesus; and it begins and ends on the same day. And it is all one tale. But it’s easy to get confused! For example, Emilia is the Abbess at Ephesus. But before that she was the wife of Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse; and they had twin sons, both named Antipholus.

[Shakespeare]: Those sons had twin servants, both named Dromio.

[Interlocutor]: Yes! And when all these twins were little babies, the whole family, servants and all, was in a shipwreck. The parents got separated in the storm, and so did the twins. Emilia, with one Antipholus and one Dromio, was rescued by one ship, and Egeon, with the other Antipholus and the other Dromio, was rescued by another. Neither knew whether the others lived or died.

[Shakespeare]: The play begins some twenty years later. Antipholus of Syracuse, and his servant Dromio, have taken leave of Egeon and seek the others and are in Ephesus. Egeon is seeking too, and he comes to Ephesus separately.

Now, we must remember that the two cities, Ephesus and Syracuse, are at odds.

[Interlocutor]: The law is that no one from one city may enter the other without forfeit of a thousand marks, on pain of death. Egeon is caught, and convicted of breaking this law. Lacking the wealth to pay the forfeit, he is condemned to die.

[Shakespeare]: The Duke of Ephesus pities him, and gives him one day to find the means to pay the forfeit. The Duke’s limit of one day: we are obeying the rule of unity of time.

[Interlocutor]: Why aren’t Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse also arrested and condemned?

[Shakespeare: No one can tell them from their twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus. The two sets of twins, bearing the same names, pursue their daily affairs in the same city. Each twin is repeatedly mistaken for his brother, yet does not even know that his brother is alive, which leads to much confusion, indignation, dismay, and distress, and finally discovery. Only the playgoers understand who is who and what is happening.

[Interlocutor]: Dromio of Syracuse flees from a kitchen-wench who claims him as her husband, thinking he is Dromio of Ephesus. And Adriana, wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, sends Dromio of Ephesus to bring her husband home, as he is late for dinner.

[Shakespeare]: But Dromio of Ephesus finds Antipholus of Syracuse and, with a deal of trouble, brings him to Adriana instead. She is already suspicious that her husband is straying to other women. When he treats her as a stranger she describes what they should be to one another:

Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
Whose weakness married to thy stronger state
Makes me with thy strength to communicate.
If aught possesses thee from me, it is dross,
Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss
Who, all for want of pruning, with intrusion
Infect thy sap and live on thy confusion.

[Interlocutor]: But he is Antipholus of Syracuse, not Antipholus of Ephesus. He is unmarried, and he falls in love with Adriana’s sister, Luciana.

[Shakespeare]: And Luciana would find his suit most sweet did she not think it came from her sister’s husband!

[Interlocutor]: Later Dromio of Syracuse meets Antipholus of Ephesus face to face, and gives news of his errands to – as he thinks – his master:

Our fraughtage, Sir
I have conveyed aboard, and I have bought
The oil, the balsamum, and aqua vitae.

[Shakespeare]: Oil is well known to calm troubled waters; and aqua vitae was thought in my time to be a powerful restorative; and the herb balsamum in particular was good to calm a distracted mind.

But Antipholus of Ephesus knows nothing of the errand whereof Dromio of Syracuse speaks. Both Antipholuses and both Dromios begin to believe that everyone is mad except himself, while everyone else is sure that the men themselves are mad.

I[nterlocutor]: There is yet another course of mistakings about a golden chain.

[Shakespeare]: Yes. When Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse at last find each other again, Dromio’s tales of his dealings with Antipholus of Ephesus persuade Antipholus of Syracuse that the whole city is full of enchanters seeking to trap them in illusions.

[Interlocutor]: They encounter a courtesan who has just entertained Antipholus of Ephesus at dinner, where she gave him a costly ring. She sees that golden chain in the hand of Antipholus of Syracuse, and at once she says:

Is that the chain you promised me today?…
Give me the ring of mine you had at dinner,
Or for my diamond, the chain you promised.

[Shakespeare]: Dromio of Syracuse thinks she must be a sorceress. He says:

Some devils ask but the parings of one’s nail,
A rush, a hair, a drop of blood, a pin,
A nut, a cherry-stone;
But she, more covetous, would have a chain.

[Interlocutor]: Adriana sends for Doctor Pinch to cure her husband’s madness. As luck would have it, she does indeed bring the doctor to her true husband, Antipholus of Ephesus; but of course he will have none of their accusations of madness. Instead he accuses Adriana of too much familiarity with the unattractive Doctor Pinch:

Did this companion with the saffron face
Revel and feast it at my house today?

[Shakespeare]: The play then ends at the close of day, honoring the unity of time. The abbess reveals herself as Emilia, is re-united to Egeon, and they recover their sons; the twins are re-united to one another; the unmarried Antipholus is free to marry the sister of his twin’s wife; the Duke remits the forfeit and welcomes Egeon to Ephesus; and they all are one.