The Comedy of Errors

The Comedy of Errors 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.

What Egeon doesn’t know is that the son he has raised, Antipholus, and his slave, Dromio, have also arrived in Ephesus and that the missing son lives in Ephesus and has become a prosperous man, involved in the civic life of the city. He is well-known as Antipholus of Ephesus. He also has a slave, called Dromio who is the identical twin brother of Dromio of Syracuse. They had been separated at birth.

Antipholus of Ephesus’s wife, Adriana, encounters Antipholus of Syracuse and mistakes him for her husband. She insists that he go home with her to dinner. He leaves his slave to guard the door, and when Antipholus of Ephesus comes home, Dromio of Syracuse refuses him entry to the house.