The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors is a comedy play by William Shakespeare. It is his shortest farcical comedies. This is probably the most complicated of all Shakespeare’s plays, involving two sets of identical twins with multiple identity confusions. It begins with a Syracuse merchant, Egeon, being led to his execution for defying the ban against travel between Syracuse and Ephesus.

As he is taken to the gallows he tells Duke Solinus, the Ephesian ruler, that he has come in search of his wife and one of his twin sons, who were lost twenty-five years before in a shipwreck. The other twin is also searching for his mother and brother. The duke feels sorry for Egeon and gives him a day’s stay of execution, to allow him to raise the ransom that would save his life.

After both being separated from their twins in a shipwreck, Antipholus and his slave Dromio go to Ephesus to find them. The other set of twins lives in Ephesus, and new arrivals cause a series of incidents of mistaken identity. Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, Adriana, encounters Antipholus of Syracuse and mistakes him for her husband. When Antipholus of Syracuse sees Adriana’s sister, Luciana, he falls in love with her. Believing him to be her brother-in-law, she is shocked by his flirtatious behavior.