The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors is one of William Shakespeare’s early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. After both being separated from their twins in a shipwreck, Antiholes and his slave Dromio go to Ephesus to find them. The other set of twins lives in Ephesus, and the new arrivals cause a series of incidents of mistaken identity. The main themes of this play are family loyalties, persistence, identity and coincidence. As in all Shakespeare’s plays, the theme of love and the relationships between men and women is prominent.