The Comedy of Errors (Vol. 34) | Joseph Candido (essay date 1990)
Joseph Candido (essay date 1990)
SOURCE: "Dining Out in Ephesus: Food in The Comedy of Errors," in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 30, No. 2, Spring, 1990, pp. 217-41.
[In this excerpt, Candido shows that characters' attitudes toward meals reveals their gendered understanding of marital social obligations.]
C. L. Barber and Richard P. Wheeler observe shrewdly that in The Comedy of Errors "Shakespeare is marvelous at conveying a sense of a world already there," and cite Dromio of Ephesus's first words as illustrating the "routine tensions" of "daily, ordinary life" that pervade the play:1
The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit;
The clock hath strucken twelve upon the bell:
My mistress made it one upon my cheek:
She is so hot, because the meat is cold.
...
[The entire page is 7734 words long]
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