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Martine Van Elk (essay date 2003)

SOURCE: Van Elk, Martine. “Urban Misidentification in The Comedy of Errors and the Cony-Catching Pamphlets.” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 43, no. 2 (2003): 323-46.

[In the following essay, Van Elk relates instances of “misidentification” in The Comedy of Errors to the deliberate trickery represented in Elizabethan rogue literature.]

In Plautus's Menaechmi, the slave Messenio cautions his master, the traveling twin who has just arrived in Epidamnus, about the dangers that lurk in the city: “among the people of Epidamnus are the most outrageous voluptuaries and drinkers; besides, very many slanderers and flatterers live there; then, the whores of no other races are said to speak with a more flattering tongue.”¹ In translating the text for an early modern English audience, William Warner makes Messenio's warning more specific to English interests. His...

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1. Introduction
2. Criticism: Overviews And General Studies
   1. Robert S. Miola (essay date 1997)
   2. Charles Whitworth (essay date 2002)
3. Criticism: Character Studies
   1. Charles Brooks (essay date summer 1960)
   2. Wolfgang Riehle (essay date 1990)
4. Criticism: Production Reviews
   1. D. J. R. Bruckner (review date 14 July 2000)
   2. Michael Phillips (review date 26 March 2001)
   3. Don Shirley (review date 9 July 2001)
   4. Don Shirley (review date 9 July 2001)
   5. Douglas E. Green (review date spring/summer 2003)
5. Criticism: Themes
   1. Douglas Green (essay date 1995)
   2. Martine Van Elk (essay date 2003)
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright