55 pages • 1 hour read
The Comedy of Errors
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Themes
The Importance of Commerce and Wealth
The characters of the play inhabit a highly commercial world, in which their trade and wealth are closely connected to their reputations, relationships, and fate. The stakes in the comedic exchanges around mistaken identity often revolve around money and material goods. The play is set in the context of a trade war, with Egeon facing death for being a merchant from a rival city. Through all of these elements, the play examines the importance of wealth and commerce.
The characters’ commercial selves are intertwined with their broader social selves, as reputation and business are fundamentally linked. The chain of debt from the Second Merchant to Angelo to Antipholus rests on the idea that a person’s financial behavior shows their character, which in turn determines their financial behavior. The characters cannot believe that this link can fail, discussing Antipholus’s solid reputation with bemusement as Angelo notes, “his word might bear my wealth at any time” (V.1.8). Similarly, the Courtesan cannot believe that Antipholus would cheat her financially as it goes against his character and reputation: She sees his apparent defaulting on a promised transaction as proof that he must be “mad.” The need to balance the value of the chain, the Courtesan’s ring, and the payments owed by Angelo and Antipholus forms the basis of the main plot from Act III to the end of the play, with the confusion over this transactional circle leading to characters’ arrests and imprisonments, and to the assumption that “madness” or supernatural forces are at play.
Adriana’s marital situation also illustrates the importance of commerce and wealth even in the play’s domestic sphere. When the promised chain does not materialize, she takes its absence as proof that her husband does not love her and is having an affair: To her, material transactions parallel emotional ones. She compares herself to an object being devalued by Antipholus’s lack of investment: Marriage has transferred her possessions and self over to him, and positioned her as part of his material wealth. Her personal qualities, including her beauty and clothes, and also her “discourses” or “wit” (II.1.91), are all commercial properties that form part of her value. When her husband fails to “value” her through demonstrations of material affection through gift-giving, she fears that her “value” as a woman and a wife likewise decreases.
The play therefore depicts an environment in which commerce and wealth define the characters’ worldviews, and their relationships to each other and themselves: They cannot tolerate material inconsistencies. The mistaken identity of the two Antipholuses and the Dromios causes the characters’ accounts to be out of balance in a literal and figurative sense. At the end of the play, relationships and identities are restored in parallel with the literal balancing of accounts: Everyone is paid the money they are owed, and restored to their proper social place.
The Problem of Rifts in Interpersonal Relationships
Throughout The Comedy of Errors, Shakespeare explores the problem of rifts in interpersonal relationships. While some of these rifts are physical in nature, involving geographical separation, others reflect the fracturing of emotional intimacy and trust, or the rifts created by social and gender barriers.
The physical rift of separation is introduced immediately in Egeon’s story, serving as the underlying cause of the characters’ problems. Egeon and Antipholus of Syracuse are desperate to seek the lost members of their family, risking their lives to do so. Antipholus feels that he has lost himself in the world looking for his brother. The sets of twins become unsure of their own selves, wondering if they are “mad” or transformed into other beings. When this physical rift is finally overcome and the family is reunited, everything makes sense again: Their sense of self is restored, as they understand what has happened. Egeon’s physical self is also saved, as he is spared execution.
The play also explores interpersonal rifts created by a lack of emotional intimacy and trust. Antipholus of Ephesus and Adriana are married but are never onstage together until the final scene of Act IV, in which she has him imprisoned and he threatens her with physical violence. The emotional rift between them is symbolized by their physical distance: For most of the play, she does not know where her husband really is, and he sees her as an enemy. When she thinks they are together, it is not really him, reflecting their lack of personal connection. Both Antipholus’s disrespect and Adriana’s jealousy exacerbate this rift, damaging themselves and their bond: Adriana feels she is wasting away with her distress, while Antipholus’s spiraling anger and erratic behavior mirror his internal confusion.
The play also shows the rifts created by gender and social hierarchies. Luciana and Emilia argue that Adriana’s failure to accept her subservient role as a wife is at the heart of her rift with her husband, while Adriana questions the fairness of the different gender expectations, pointing out that her husband’s refusal to value her makes it harder for her to trust him. Social hierarchies also create rifts between the Antipholus twins and their servants. They sometimes have a friendly relationship, such as when Antipholus of Syracuse encourages Dromio’s joking, or when Dromio confides in Antipholus about his fears and confusion when the kitchen maid claims him, relying on his recognition to restore his sense of self. However, each Antipholus beats their respective Dromio and blames them for the mix-ups, while the Dromios both lament their lot. Their different social status separates the Antipholuses and Dromios from each other with an irreconcilable rift, even though they have known each other longer than anyone.
Although interpersonal rifts impact all of the characters negatively, the play differs in its outlook as to whether these rifts can or should be overcome. Mending a familial rift is the cornerstone of the play’s happy ending and restores order to the world, but social and gender hierarchies are portrayed as inevitable forces to navigate.
The Nature of Identity
The play’s plot revolves around mistaken identity, serving as a vehicle to examine whether identity is fixed or fluid, and where it comes from: Whether it is internal, relational to the wider world, or a mixture of both. Through the characters’ dilemmas, the play explores the nature of identity.
For the two sets of twins, their shared name and appearance suggest that they have a fundamental familial identity, even when they have completely separate lives. Antipholus of Syracuse feels incomplete without his twin, dedicating time to searching for him. Though they have never met, the twins have enough similarities that they are unquestioningly mistaken for each other: They have similar speech patterns; each Antipholus is a merchant; and the Dromios use the same comedic wordplay and quick banter with each of them. The same similarities appear in the Dromio twins. Each Dromio is a loyal and competent servant, full of quick wit and good humor. These similarities thus reinforce the sense of familial identity as a key marker of individual identity.
The twins’ sense of self is challenged when the world around them does not behave in accordance with their own sense of identity. When the Ephesian citizens act as though they know Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse, they become unsure of themselves, wondering if they are “mad” or transformed into another being. Antipholus is alarmed when Adriana claims him as her husband, wondering why she seems to know who he is even when he has never seen her before. When Antipholus of Ephesus is barred from his house by his wife, his behavior becomes more erratic, as he threatens his wife and chews through his restraints. The treatment of those around him makes it impossible for him to assert his own identity, as his attempts to fight back only confirm their assumptions about his “madness.” The characters’ confusion and distress reflect the importance of social relations in reinforcing one’s sense of self.
The nature of identity is also reinforced in Egeon’s arc: He comes to Ephesus in the role of a lost father, but he cannot escape his identity as a Syracusean merchant, which defines him according to the Ephesian world. In the final Act, these different parts of his identity are reconciled through the literal reconciliation of his family: He is recognized as a father and husband, which secures his release, and is reunited with his sons and wife. Thus, when the social and familial connections are restored to each character at the play’s end, the characters can understand their individual identities once more.
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By William Shakespeare
