The Comedy of Errors
In The Comedy of Errors, two sets of identical twins, separated at birth, all wind up in the same city on the same day. Chaos ensues. This is Shakespeare's shortest, wildest farce—and the plants anchor what could otherwise spin into pure absurdity.
Ivy clings and twines, never letting go—and that's exactly what Adriana does when she mistakes the wrong twin for her husband. She rails against him:
Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,
Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
Makes me with thy strength to communicate.
The elm was proverbially the tree that supported vines in Elizabethan gardens. Marriage as mutual support, vegetable partnership—except she's talking to the wrong man entirely.
Balm appears when characters need soothing after the day's madness. Saffron gets mentioned in the context of food and commerce—this whole play takes place in a merchant city, where everything (including people) can be bought, sold, or mistaken for something else. The marketplace is thick with rushes underfoot, the practical, disposable groundcover of everyday life. Nothing precious, nothing permanent—just the backdrop for a day of spectacular confusion.
By the time everyone's identity gets sorted out, the grapes and vines reappear, symbols of festivity and reconciliation. Families reunite, marriages get repaired, and the plants remind us this was always a comedy—rooted, despite everything, in the everyday rhythms of growth and connection.
The Story, Told in Plants
The Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare's most tightly wound farce — two sets of identical twins, one city, one catastrophic day. The plants are few, but they earn their place: Adriana describes her marriage as elm and vine, while Dromio rattles off the price of a sorceress's services as a rush, a hair, a nut, a cherry-stone.
This video was created by members of the Colorado Shakespeare Gardens and narrated by longtime CSF actor Chuck Wilcox.
For more information on (CC) artwork in this video, click here.
Not every plant Shakespeare mentioned will grow in Colorado.
These are the ones that do; currently growing in our Comedy of Errors garden.
Curious about a specific plant? Visit our Plant Library for the full story.
