Compounding Errors | Iii
III
When Shakespeare chose to frame Plautus' play of the twins of Epidamnum with the venerable romance of the shipwrecked family, he did more than merely complicate the plot: he immeasurably enlarged the scope of the whole dramatic structure. Modern critics have been quick to see the paired stories of the father and his sons as segregated by style or genre or some other consideration, but fixing overrigid boundaries between "frame story" and the central action tends to obscure the links between them in a way the play explicitly refuses.23 The central action and concern of the opening scene is the power of Egeon's narrative to create a community of mutual interest, even in the face of political and social antagonism. The question of what narrative is for is before us from the outset, and the opening tableau sets forth large images of the play's stakes which are then worked out in more elaborate detail through the Plautine material. By fusing...
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