Last performed in 2001
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Synopsis
Doubles with a Difference: Twins in Shakespeare's Plays
Much of the delight we take in seeing The Comedy of Errors (1590-94) comes from the two sets of twins who drive its plot: the brothers Antipholus and the brothers Dromio. Several years later Shakespeare again used twin characters to complicate the plot of Twelfth Night (1601-02), a romantic comedy with melancholy overtones. This third set of twins is comprised of a brother and sister, Sebastian and Viola. When Viola takes on the disguise of a male servant, comic mistakes of identity similar to those in The Comedy ensue.
Shakespeare was himself the father of twins, a girl named Judith and a boy named Hamnet, born in 1585. Although Shakespeare's plays are not autobiographical, it is hard to imagine that his experiences as the father of twins did not give him special interest in the twin relationship. He must also have been influenced by the death of Hamnet in 1596, an event that occurred between the writing of his two plays that feature twins.
Shakespeare's choice of source material for The Comedy of Errors may have grown out of his interest in twins. Whereas in ancient myth twins were considered unnatural and frightful, around the year 200 B.C. Plautus wrote the first work in which twins appear as normal protagonists, Menaechmi. This comedy of mistaken identity is Shakespeare's major source for The Comedy. From another play by Plautus, Amphitruo, he took the cue to provide twin servants for the twin protagonists.
In this way Shakespeare created an ingenious set of characters for a comedy based on mistaken identity, a motif that he employed throughout his career. The twin masters and twin servants in The Comedy are often played as mirror images of each other, at least in appearance. The script even gives them the same names: Antipholus of Syracuse and Antipholus of Ephesus; Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus. Why? No one would mistake them for each other if they answered to two different names. The only plausible explanation for this unrealistic touch, which is necessary to the working of the plot, is that Egeon believed his older son, Antipholus of Ephesus, to be dead along with his servant; therefore he renamed the younger son and his servant for their deceased siblings.
Although The Comedy is slight on thematic content, one major idea that emerges from the script and converges with the twin characters in the plot is the tension between illusion and reality. We refer to the difference between what a person appears to be and what he in reality is as the appearance versus reality theme. This theme is at the grassroots level of all comedy. When a person mistakes appearance for reality, conflict and disorder follow. The endings of both The Comedy and Twelfth Night suggest that society can be stable only when illusions are overturned. Again and again Shakespeare's plays imply that we must be careful about drawing false conclusions about almost any person or situation, or, in other words, making judgments based on outward appearance.
Although Shakespeare did not strain to create lifelike characters, he sometimes achieves a degree of psychological realism in his characterization in spite of his usual preoccupation with plot. For example, as the plot of The Comedy unfolds, he goes beyond the stereotype of twins as indistinguishable and introduces differences alongside the similarities between the twin brothers. Dromio of Ephesus is more obtuse and clownish than Dromio of Syracuse, a clever prankster who talks more. In the end the twin servants argue about which twin is older and should exit first, but finally they decide to go out together.
The differences between the two Antipholuses are more marked. Antipholus of Syracuse is a romantic wanderer, traveling in a strange land because he yearns after his long-lost brother and mother. The playwright endows him with a more sensitive, introspective nature than his brother's and an eagerness to fall in love. Antipholus of Ephesus is a hot-headed businessman, smug and self-satisfied. His impetuous responses keep the conflict around him raging until he is at last perceived to be insane.
Shakespeare also shows insight into the inseparable bond between twins in his characterization of Antipholus of Syracuse, whose physical separation from his twin is tantamount to psychic separation. He describes himself as having lost part of his identity: "I to the world am like a drop of water/That in the ocean seeks another drop." In searching for his brother, he searches for the other part of himself, for his past and his parentage, at the risk of his very life.
Shakespeare parallels the bond between twins to the bond of marriage when Adriana uses the same image of a divided drop of water in describing herself as having lost part of her identity because she has lost the love of her husband, Antipholus of Ephesus. Marriage partners, like twins, should be inseparable, indivisible.
Two conventions of the climax of Shakespearean comedy are the revelation of true identity and the resolution of any romantic conflicts remaining in the plot. This sort of ending implies that right relationships among human beings must begin from a position of truth about their own individual identities. When mistaken identity has been an issue, Shakespeare's comic resolutions work out very quickly in the play's final scene. In The Comedy, for example, once the abbess brings together the two long-separated sets of twins, all identities become clear, and reunion and restoration follow. In the romantic resolution the Antipholus twins are not only reunited as brothers; they are set to become brothers-in-law as well.
The Comedy is the first of Shakespeare's plays that use comic absurdities to explore profound human values and concerns. It is, above all, a play about identity, about knowing oneself in order to have satisfying relationships with others. "Who am I?" and "What is reality?" are universal themes in both tragic and comic drama. Shakespeare would return to these ideas and materials again and again in his works.
Janie McCauley, Dramaturg