The Comedy of Errors (Vol. 34) | R. A. Foakes (essay date 1962)
R. A. Foakes (essay date 1962)
SOURCE: An introduction to The Comedy of Errors, revised edition, edited by R. A. Foakes, Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1962, pp. xi-lv.
[In this excerpt, Foakes argues that the chaotic situations engineered by the plot of The Comedy of Errors expose an underlying instability of the characters' sense of identity.]
Shakespeare altered the tone of his immediate sources for the comedy, Menaechmi and Amphitruo, by introducing an element of romantic love in the jealousy of Adriana and in the passion of Antipholus of Syracuse for Luciana, and also by enclosing the comic plot within the story of the pathetic Egeon; he also enlarged and complicated the element of farce by giving the twin masters twin servants, so multiplying the possibilities of comic confusion. These two developments of source-material do not really tug in different directions, and Shakespeare had a larger purpose than merely to soften...
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