55 pages • 1 hour read
The Comedy of Errors
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Symbols & Motifs
The Ocean
The ocean features in both the characters’ language and as a dominant force in their lives, imbued with symbolic meaning. In Egeon’s backstory, the ocean brings him trade and wealth, but also tears his family apart through the unpredictable power of a storm. It surrounds the port city of Ephesus where the action takes place, and offers a way in and out of the city: It dictates many of the characters’ actions, as they are dependent on ships if they want to leave, creating high stakes. The Second Merchant initiates the plotline surrounding Antipholus’s debt for the chain because he has to leave on a certain ship, while the ocean allows Antipholus of Syracuse to roam the world on his quest. In all of these examples, the ocean represents forces bigger than the characters, exemplifying freedom, opportunity, and escape, but also danger and confusion.
The characters also use the ocean as a metaphor, often relating to The Problem of Rifts in Interpersonal Relationships. They draw on its unpredictability and scale to articulate the nature of a rift and its significance to them. Antipholus of Syracuse uses the image of a drop in the ocean searching for another drop to describe the lost feeling he has searching for his brother. Adriana uses this same image of a drop falling into an ocean to describe how the bond of marriage ought to work to her wayward husband. She argues that marital separation is like trying to remove the same drop alone “without addition or diminishing” (II.2.128): Once mingled, they should be inseparable. Both juxtapose tiny drops of water with the huge ocean to articulate the loneliness and insignificance of a single person in the huge world, suggesting that joining with another can counter this and give meaning.
Antipholus of Syracuse also invokes the ocean in how he frames his attraction to Luciana: He compares her to mermaids and sirens, mythical beings of the sea. He combines the play’s recurring imagery of witchcraft and magic with the idea of the ocean’s lure and power, but also its danger and unknown quality.
The Chain
The chain necklace is a key symbol in The Comedy of Errors. Jewelry is a traditional romantic gift, often associated with marriage or romance in literature. As a husband’s gift to a wife, a necklace suggests the man’s ownership of the woman, as it encircles the neck. It also suggests the woman’s value and beauty. In this framework, it is fitting that Antipholus has ordered a gold necklace for his wife. However, Adriana never receives this, symbolizing the rift in their relationship and his disloyalty. There is a delay finishing the chain in time, paralleling how he is late home for dinner and keeps his whereabouts unknown: In both cases he does not follow through on his word to her. He then resolves to give the chain to the Courtesan instead just to spite his wife, causing serious consequences that echo through the rest of the play. While in the end he doesn’t do this and his suggested infidelity is never proven, either way he treats Adriana poorly, and does not deliver the love or loyalty expected of a marriage.
The fact that the item is a chain also suggests entrapment, reflecting that both spouses feel restricted by their relationship in different ways: Antipholus wants to stay out and finds Adriana overbearing; Adriana is physically confined at home and feels her sense of self is wasting away without her husband’s attention. The chain is also gold, and much of the plot revolves around its value; it is used in concurrence with the motif of money to show the interconnection of the personal and the financial for characters like Antipholus. His friendship with Angelo and marriage to Adriana are both impacted by the value of the gold chain, symbolizing that these relationships are partly built on material concerns.
The chain’s narrative significance always relates to obligation, whether marital, financial, or out of honor: Angelo must deliver it as promised; the Courtesan is owed it for her ring; Antipholus owes money for it; the characters are prepared to duel over how its handling impacts their reputations. Thus, the chain is a symbol of obligation between people.
Money
Money is an important motif in the play, reflecting The Importance of Commerce and Wealth in Ephesus and for the characters. The movement of money is what lends stakes to the mishaps over mistaken identity: The problems arise when money does not end up with the right person at the right time.
The relationships between the Dromios and each Antipholus escalate into violence because of the Dromios apparently mislaying or failing to bring money. Antipholus of Ephesus’s relationships with his wife and his social acquaintances all deteriorate when he seemingly mishandles the money that moves between them. Egeon and both the Antipholus twins are sentenced to death or prison respectively because of failing to produce money. Money becomes a paramount part of their familial reunion as well: For Egeon, seeing his son again means his ransom can be paid; on finding his father, Antipholus offers up a purse to save him (though Solinus declines it). This all suggests the transactional nature of relationships and society in Ephesus: People’s lives, freedom, marriages, and friendships can all be measured and paid for in gold.
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By William Shakespeare
