The Comedy of Errors (Vol. 34) - Overviews
OVERVIEWS
C. L. Barber (essay date 1964)
SOURCE: "Shakespearian Comedy in The Comedy of Errors," in College English, Vol. 25, No. 7, April, 1964, pp. 493-97.
[In this essay, Barber discusses the nature of the comic elements in The Comedy of Errors.]
Mr. R. A. Foakes, in his excellent Arden edition of the Comedy of Errors, remarks that producers of the play have too often regarded it "as a short apprentice work in need of improvement, or as mere farce, 'shamelessly trivial' as one reviewer in The Times put it." Accordingly they have usually adapted it, added to it, fancied it up. But in its own right, as its stage popularity attests, it is a delightful play. Shakespeare outdoes Plautus in brilliant, hilarious complication. He makes the arbitrary reign of universal delusion the occasion for a dazzling display of his dramatic control of his characters' separate perspectives, keeping track for our benefit of...
[The entire page is 3036 words long]
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