[In the following essay, Dorsch highlights various productions of 'The Comedy of Errors, from the debut of the work to Adrian Noble's 1983 revival at Stratford. Noting the play's continued popularity, Dorsch concludes, "it has been and always will be good theatre."]

The first known performance of The Comedy of Errors, at Gray's Inn … took place in 1594. Ten years later, again on Innocents' Day, it was played as part of the Christmas festivities at Court. There follows a long gap in its history on the stage, but some early references to it have come down to us. It is listed among Shakespeare's comedies in Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia of 1598, and The Shakespeare Allusion-Book records a number of seventeenth-century allusions, but from this century we hear of no productions later than 1604.

In the eighteenth century there were several adaptations, all retaining the main feature of twins faced with strange encounters, but all departing, each in its own way, from the original. The first seems to have been the farce Every Body Mistaken of 1716. In October 1734 a comedy in two acts, 'taken from Plautus and Shakespeare' and entitled See if You Like it, or 'Tis All a Mistake, was acted at Drury Lane, and was played fairly often at Covent Garden—with variants—for the next seventy or eighty years, and sometimes again at Drury Lane. The most popular adaptation, containing songs and other extra matter, and attributed to the actor and playwright Thomas Hull, was The Twins, or The Comedy of Errors (1762); it is more likely that an altered version of 1779 and another of 1793 were by Hull. In these recreations the play was year after year performed at Covent Garden.

Among versions which did not long hold the stage, there was W. Woods's farce The Twins, or Which is Which?, produced in 1780 in Edinburgh and as a three-acter in 1790 at Covent Garden. In J. P. Kemble's adaptation of Hull (printed 1811), which kept the additional scenes and songs, Egeon was almost always played by Hull himself. 'In general, the aim of these versions was to remove, or to conceal, the "improbability" of the events, and to get rid of some of the verbal witticism which amused Georgian audiences less than it had amused Elizabethan' [Harold child, in "The Stage History of The Comedy of Errors, " in Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson's edition of the play]. It is possible that Frederick Reynolds's conversion of the play into an opera (1819) enjoyed as great a success as Kemble's adaptation.

In 1855 Samuel Phelps brought Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors back to the stage (as he did others of the plays), placing it in a double bill with A. R. Slous's Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh; in the following year he gave Shakespeare, not Slous, pride of place. Ten years later, as part of the Shakespeare Tercentenary celebrations in 1864, the play was produced at the Princess's Theatre and in provincial towns with two Irish brothers, Charles and Henry Webb, as the Dromios, and George Vining and J. Nelson as the Antipholuses (under the direction of Falconer and Chatterton). A generation later came Sir Frank Benson's London production of 1905, with Benson himself as Antipholus of Syracuse. Sir Philip Ben Greet's 1915 presentation at the Old Vic was notable for one of Sybil Thorndike's earliest appearances—as Adriana—on the London stage. When the play was again seen at the Old Vic in 1927, there was much rumbustious clowning, and the twins wore false noses, two turned up and two turned down. In a Regent's Park production in 1934 The Comedy of Errors was, strangely to my mind, paired with Comus.

The most famous and probably the most influential mid-century production was Theodor Komisarjevsky's brilliantly farcical burlesque, presented in the Stratford season of 1938 and revived in the following year. Among the comic devices, Komisarjevsky dressed his characters in costumes of many styles and periods, giving most of the men bowler hats of various colours. 'The emphasis was on fun, and the citizens of Ephesus burst into song or moved into ballet whenever tedium threatened' [R.A. Foakes, ed., The Comedy of Errors, 1962]. The music was from Handel and Anthony Bernard. Although some reviewers thought that Komisarjevsky had too grossly traduced Shakespeare, audiences were enthusiastic. He was followed or paralleled in the use of music by several directors; there was, for example, the popular American musical comedy, The Boys from Syracuse, first seen in New York in 1938, and later filmed.

There were many other transformations: in 1940 at the Mercury Theatre as a modern-dress amalgam of Plautus, Shakespeare, and Molière, entitled A New Comedy of Errors, or Too Many Twins; in 1951 in Cambridge as a musical comedy in the Victorian manner; in 1952 in Canter-bury and London with Edwardian costumes, music by Sullivan, and an early-twentieth-century setting in the Near East; in 1954 as a television operetta which two years later was played in London; and in 1965 at Oxford, again as a musical, against a New Orleans waterside background.

During this fun period The Comedy of Errors was also several times presented 'seriously', more closely following the play as Shakespeare wrote it: by the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, directed by Douglas Seale, in 1948; by the Bristol Old Vic, directed by Denis Carey, in 1953; by the London Old Vic, directed by Walter Hudd, in 1957. On this last occasion the play was drastically shortened, to be fitted into a double bill with Titus Andronicus; Robert Helpmann, miming and gagging the role of Dr Pinch, out-shone the rest of the cast.

At short notice, Clifford Williams in 1962 directed a production at Stratford which was so successful that it was revived in the three following seasons; it was taken to America and to Continental countries, including Russia, Finland, and Yugoslavia, and in 1972 was again revived at Stratford. Everywhere it had warm reviews. In The Times Harold Hobson described it as 'one of the cleverest things Stratford has done for a long time. The wild comedy of irrational recognitions is given consistency and a curious force by the suggestion that there's behind it something vaguely disquieting.' Izvestia praised 'the absolute finish and clarity'. Reviewing for the Guardian, Michael Billington called Williams's treatment 'a milestone in post-war theatrical production'.

Trevor Nunn's no less popular Stratford production of 1976, after runs at Newcastle and again at Stratford in the following year, was moved to the Aldwych. There were many justly enthusiastic reviews; J. W. Lambert in the Sunday Times contrasted Nunn's version with Williams's and described it as 'a bulging basket of song and dance and clowning confrontations'. John Napier's Ephesus 'is the absolute epitome of a timeless Mediterranean tourist trap… A lively crowd of tarts, slinky pimps, priests, policemen come and go …In pout and patter Judi Dench predictably enchants as the discontented wife; Francesca Annis is a bespectacled delight as her patience-counselling sister, no less flirtatious than reproving.' This production was televised and is available on video-tape.

Another Stratford Comedy of Errors was directed by Adrian Noble in 1983. This won praise, but also some adverse criticism for its hotch-potch of comic styles. In the same year there was a BBC television performance on Christmas Eve, its text accompanied by a cast list and a chapter on the production by Henry Fenwick. These days the comedy is often played; it always has been and always will be good theatre.