SOURCE: “Shakespeare and Plautus: Two Twin Comedies,” in The Classical Tradition in Operation, University of Toronto Press, 1994, pp. 32-60.

[In the following essay, Rudd compares the plot structure, characterization, and farcical elements of Plautus’ Menaechmi to The Comedy of Errors.]

In comparing the two plays I shall quickly outline the Menaechmi, noting certain features.¹ Then, going on to The Comedy of Errors, I shall describe how, while retaining important Plautine elements, Shakespeare wove the Latin farce into the framework of a Hellenistic romance, and how in doing so he developed both genres into something richer and more complex, something which reflected contemporary ideas on love and on Christian marriage.

The background of the Menaechmi is supplied in the ingratiatingly jokey prologue.² A father from Syracuse takes one twin to Tarentum and leaves the other at home. At Tarentum, the boy Menaechmus gets lost in the crowd and is carried off to Epidamnus by a merchant. Though the father dies of a broken heart, in Epidamnus the boy is well brought up, and eventually a wife is found for him, complete with dowry. After this the kidnapper is conveniently drowned—a death described in suitably heartless terms.³ Back in Sicily the grandfather changed the second twin's name to Menaechmus in order to maintain the family tradition. Years later, Menaechmus 2 sets off in search of his brother and eventually comes to Epidamnus.

The speaker of the Prologue has by now given the author's name (Plautus), cajoled the audience into a receptive mood, outlined the events leading up to the play, and in general made possible a smooth transition from the real-life theatre in Rome to the imaginary setting of Epidamnus on the coast of the modern Albania. He concludes with a gesture towards the simple, all-purpose, set:

haec urbs Epidamnus est dum haec agitur fabula:
quando alia agetur aliud fiet oppidum

(72-3)

This city is Epidamnus as long as this play is in progress;(4) when another play is on, it will become another town.

The play proper begins with the entrance of the parasite Peniculus, who at once introduces himself: ‘The young set call me Brush, because when I eat I sweep the table clean.’⁵ He then delivers a homily on how to keep friends. Briefly, you bind them to you by food and drink:

apud mensam plenam homini rostrum deliges

(89)

You should fasten a fellow's snout to a full table.

If you do, then he'll never run away, even if he has committed murder. Now comes the practical illustration. Peniculus is going to visit his friend and patron Menaechmus, who has exactly that kind of hold over his affections. In fact Menaechmus’ table is piled so high that if you want something off the top you have to stand on your chair. Clearly the purpose of all this is to prepare us for the main character, who is something of a glutton. And that, in turn, provides an introduction to the business of cena, or ‘dinner,’ which has such an important part in the action. That importance is greatly reduced by Shakespeare, who has other dramatic interests. And so it is no surprise to find that Peniculus the gormandizer has no counterpart in The Comedy of Errors.

Menaechmus now enters, abusing his wife, who is indoors and has presumably switched him off:

nam quotiens foras ire uolo, me retines, reuocas, rogitas
quo ego eam, quam rem agam, quid negoti geram,
quid petam, quid feram, quid foris egerim.

(114-16)

The succession of dactyls and cretics conveys his exasperation—an effect lost in a prose rendering:

When I want to go out, you call me back and delay me, asking where I'm going, what I'm doing, what I'm engaged in, what I'm after, what I've got, what I've been up to downtown.

He concludes: ‘I've got a customs-officer in the house; for I have to declare everything.’ Much later in the play, the wife (who by then has ample reason to be angry) sees Menaechmus in the street. ‘How should I handle him?’ she asks Peniculus (568). ‘In the same way as usual,’ says Peniculus. ‘Pitch into him!’ This confirms our view of the matrona as a scold. One thinks of her as being rather like the cartoon figure Andy Capp's wife, with hair in curlers and brandishing a rolling pin. So there is no sense of outrage when at the end of the play Menaechmus decides to auction her off with the rest of his effects, if he can find a bidder. Plautus, therefore, does not intend for a moment that the character should engage our sympathy.

And this turns out to be entirely appropriate; for Menaechmus has no moral status either. He has reacted to his wife's nagging by stealing one of her dresses; and as the play opens he is on his way to present it to his girlfriend Erotium, ‘Sexpot,’ a prostitute who lives near by. It then becomes clear that Menaechmus has not only stolen the dress; he is actually wearing it under his cloak. The scene now turns into a farcical drag act, as Menaechmus minces around the stage, showing off to Peniculus, and preening himself on his squalid piece of thievery. (At one point in all this horseplay Menaechmus and Peniculus go so far as to smell the dress. As Erich Segal says, Plautus is rarely as unsavoury as this.)⁶ In due course the dress is presented to Erotium, who turns out to be a good deal more than a common tart. She has her own establishment where she can give dinner parties; she keeps a maid; and she is used to giving orders to a cook. Again, as Erotium is not quite the conventional tart, she does not have a heart of gold. Peniculus wryly comments that her affability is just a façade (193ff.). Granted his viewpoint is suspect, because he hates to see Menaechmus waste money on her which could be spent on feeding him. Yet his cynical verdict on Erotium is confirmed when, after receiving the dress, she immediately plans to enhance its value by getting Menaechmus to pay for alterations (426-7). She then tells her maid to persuade him to add an ounce of gold to a bracelet stolen on a previous occasion from his wife (526-32). Finally her maid gets into the act by wheedling Menaechmus into throwing in a pair of gold earrings for her (541-3).

So by the end of Act 1 we have a nagging wife, a deceitful and clownish husband, a gluttonous parasite, and a mercenary whore. What a collection! But really Plautus is not inviting us to condemn these characters. For to condemn them we should first have to take them seriously as moral beings. In fact they are little more than broad stereotypes. And that is fine for the sort of comedy which we are being offered—one which presents a few two-dimensional figures as victims of a series of farcical misconceptions.

These misconceptions begin with the arrival of the Syracusan Menaechmus, whom I shall refer to as ‘the Seeker.’ The Seeker is accompanied by his slave Messenio, who gravely warns him about the deplorable reputation of Epidamnus, or Ruinville:

huic urbi nomen Epidamno inditumst,
quia nemo ferme huc sine damno deuortitur.

(263-4)

This town is called Ruinville, because pretty well no one stays
here without being ruined.

In this den of trickery, then, the Seeker is mistaken for his brother, first by the cook, then by Erotium, then by Peniculus, and then by Erotium's maid. That takes us to the end of Act 3. It is worth adding that the Seeker is morally a true twin of his brother; for having dined and had sex with Erotium on a completely false basis, he promises to have trimmings added to her dress, and extra gold put on her bracelet, while all the time intending to sell these articles as soon as he goes downtown (549).

Meanwhile Peniculus, detained by a public meeting, has been done out of his dinner. This has proved too much for his loyalty, and he has told Menaechmus’ wife about the theft. Eventually, in Act 5, she catches Menaechmus with the dress; but alas it is the wrong Menaechmus. As a result of the ensuing row, she sends for her father, who concludes that his son-in-law has gone off his head. Seizing on this as a possible way of escape, the Seeker pretends to be raving mad, whereupon the father goes to fetch a doctor. By the time he arrives (late, of course, and full of pretentious jargon) the assumed patient has been replaced by Menaechmus. After further altercation, Menaechmus is led away, but is rescued in a brawl by Messenio, who mistakes him for his master. Finally the two Menaechmi encounter each other, and (surprise surprise) Messenio realizes they are twin brothers. Following the recognition scene Messenio is given his freedom—an act of poetic justice towards the only half-decent character among the main actors.⁷

On turning to The Comedy of Errors, the first thing to notice is the absence of a Prologue. We are plunged in medias res, and the background is supplied piecemeal by the characters themselves. The scene is Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor, and the circumstances are grim indeed. Egeon, a merchant from Syracuse, is under sentence of death unless he can raise 1,000 marks in ransom money. The reason is that Ephesus and Syracuse are in a state of conflict, which involves reprisals, though not actual war. This conflict presupposes a larger, political, background, which is not present in the Menaechmi. More important, the geographical background is also much wider. In the Menaechmi, Syracuse, Tarentum, and Epidamnus form a relatively small triangle, intelligible and indeed familiar to a Roman audience. But the English audience would have had only the haziest idea about the location of Syracuse, Epidamnum, and Ephesus. Still, for reasons which I shall mention shortly, they had all heard of Ephesus; and so they listened as the hapless Egeon told his story.

When sailing home from Epidamnum to Syracuse, Egeon and his family were shipwrecked and, as a result, separated. The family consisted of his wife, their twin sons, and their twin servants: six in all. Egeon, with son Antipholus and servant Dromio, eventually got back to Syracuse. Many years later Antipholus sets off with Dromio to search for his twin and also for his mother:

So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

(1.2.39-40)

Egeon, too, keeps making enquiries as he travels round the eastern Mediterranean on business.⁸ Foakes speaks of ‘the measured dignity’ and ‘simple gravity’ of Egeon's tale. As the man himself is doomed, the situation ought to be tragic. Yet this doesn't seem quite right, as the play has been advertised as a comedy. By the end of the scene the answer will have been clear, at least to the more alert. Though Egeon's ship went down in a storm, he and his family survived by lashing themselves to a mast. When they were about to be saved, the mast was split in two by a rock; yet they still remained afloat. Half the company was picked up by a fishing boat from Corinth, and the other half by a ship bound for Syracuse. Such miraculous escapes belong to a genre which has the pains and ordeals of tragedy but the happy ending of comedy—namely, the romance.

We now jump ahead to Act 5. The recognitions begin when Egeon, on his way to execution, sees the Ephesian Antipholus and Dromio, whom he wrongly takes to be the two from Syracuse (5.1.195-6). Soon, however, the two Antipholuses and the two Dromios come together; and all is concluded, if not explained, when the abbess of the priory at Ephesus enters. For she turns out to be none other than Emilia, Egeon's long-lost wife, and mother of the Antipholus twins. Egeon is duly set free, and in true comic fashion they all go off to supper. So, whereas in the Menaechmi the comedy is preceded by a prologue—Prologue/Comedy—in Shakespeare's play the comedy is woven into a framework of romance—Romance/Comedy/Romance.⁹

Although not traditionally acknowledged in classical syllabuses,¹⁰ the sentimental romance evolved as a literary form in the Graeco-Roman world. As with other genres, its origins are controversial; and fortunately they do not concern us here. Enough to recall that five specimens have survived, and that we have fragments of many more. Set in the eastern Mediterranean, they have to do with fine, handsome young men and beautiful modest girls, who are separated at the beginning of the story and are finally reunited after the most hair-raising adventures. The events in Xenophon of Ephesus' Ethiopian Story are summarized thus by Paul Turner in the introduction to his translation (1957): ‘Anthea is captured by pirates, nearly raped, nearly made a human sacrifice, buried alive after she has drugged herself to avoid a distasteful marriage, buried in a pit with two fierce dogs. Yet she ends up none the worse for her adventures. Meanwhile Habrocomes her husband has been shipwrecked off the coast of Egypt, captured by shepherds, sold into slavery, falsely accused of murdering his master, crucified on a rock overlooking the Nile, swept by a gale into the river; fished out again and condemned to be burnt at the stake. Happily the Nile overflows and puts out the flames; and Habrocomes is spared for a new series of surprising experiences.’ From this it will be inferred that credibility is not the genre's strongest feature.

A few of these romances, notably those of Achilles Tatius, Longus, and Heliodorus, were known in England at a surprisingly early date, mainly in versions of Latin or French translations.¹¹ But the most influential of all was one which had disappeared much earlier. Before it was lost, an adaptation had been made in Latin under the title Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri, usually shortened to Apollonius of Tyre.¹² Towards the end of this work Apollonius, thanks to a dream, eventually travels to Ephesus, where he is reunited with his wife, now priestess of the Temple of Diana in that city. The work came down through the Middle Ages in several versions.¹³ The one known to Shakespeare was in Book 8 of John Gower's poem Confessio Amantis (1390), where Apollonius' wife, Lucina, is significantly called an abbesse (1849). Did her name suggest Luciana's? Possibly; but at any rate Shakespeare was interested enough in the story to use it again in Pericles Prince of Tyre.

The procedure of sandwiching a farce of mistaken identity between the concluding scenes of a romance was heavily criticized by Quiller-Couch: ‘As yet farce and romance were not one “form” but two separate stools; and between them in The Comedy of Errors [Shakespeare] fell to the ground.’¹⁴ Yet in view of its continued popularity the play cannot be written off as a failure; and so it is worth looking more closely at the ways in which the two different genres have been brought together. We have already seen that improbabilities of plot were no obstacle. What, then, about the social rank of the participants? The Latin title of the romance shows that the hero was a prince; and his wife was a princess, daughter of King Archestrates of Pentapolis in Cyrenaica (North Africa). There is nothing, however, to connect Shakespeare's Egeon with the aristocracy. He is simply a merchant from Syracuse. His son, the Syracusan Antipholus, is on the same level (1.2); and the Ephesian twin also appears to be in trade (2.1.4-5, 11). So Shakespeare has eliminated the discrepancy of class by setting his play in the same world as that of the Menaechmi, who were sons of a Syracusan merchant (17).

Within this bourgeois world four types of connection are established. First, a neat link is provided in 1.2.3-7 when a merchant informs the newly arrived Antipholus that

This very day a Syracusian merchant
Is apprehended for arrival here,
And not being able to buy out his life,
According to the statutes of the town
Dies ere the weary sun set in the west.

Towards the end of the play (5.1.124-8) a second merchant says to Adriana (the Ephesian Antipholus' wife) and her friends that the Duke is coming

To see a reverend Syracusian merchant,
Who put unluckily into the bay
Against the laws and statutes of this town,
Beheaded publicly for his offence.

So at the opening and at the finish of the play Egeon is presented to the others as a fellow merchant.

Second, in 1.2 the local merchant, on greeting Antipholus of Syracuse, says ‘There is your money that I had to keep.’ Antipholus hands it to his servant Dromio. Later (1.2.81), when he asks to have it back, the amount is said to be 1,000 marks—the exact sum which was needed to save Egeon's life (1.1.21). By reminding us of this point at 2.1.61 and 65, and again at 3.1.8, Shakespeare creates a vague undercurrent of suspense: if only Antipholus knew who Egeon was.

The most important illustration of what might be called Shakespeare's mercantile emphasis is the fact that, unlike Plautus, he uses gold and sums of money as the chief instruments of misunderstanding. In the Menaechmi, as we saw, the main focus of confusion was the stolen dress. That, like the stolen bracelet, was a symbol of Menaechmus' infidelity. The wallet of money belonging to Menaechmus the Seeker (265, 385-6, 701-2, 1035-7) played a much smaller part in the complication of the plot. Shakespeare, however, makes important and recurrent use of the Syracusan's money (1.2.9; 1.2.54ff.; 2.1.61ff.; 2.2.1), of the golden chain promised to Adriana, the Ephesian's wife (2.1.106; 3.1.1; 3.1.114ff.; 3.2.165ff.; 4.1.1ff.; 4.3.45; 4.4.133; 5.1.2ff.), and of the ducats sent by Adriana to secure the Ephesian's freedom (4.1.103; 2.42; 3.12; 4.11; 4.81ff.). All these items cause confusion and altercation, with frequent charges of bad faith and dishonesty. Shakespeare, however, did not take over Plautus' dress, and he transformed the bracelet into a (more visible) chain, giving it a different and more complex function. Before leaving this commercial theme, we may perhaps risk a preliminary reference to St Paul who, as we are told in Acts 19, caused a riot by preaching the gospel in Ephesus. The trouble began among the silversmiths who made ‘shrines’ (vαoús) for the goddess Diana, and who understandably saw their livelihood threatened by this new religion. The silversmiths' craft, then, was one of the things that English people associated with Ephesus. So, although the point will not bear much weight, it is at least appropriate that in a play set in Ephesus Shakespeare should have created the character of Angelo the goldsmith and made an important comic motif out of a gold chain.¹⁵

The Ephesus of the Acts is also the centre of much stranger things. According to the New English Bible, ‘through Paul God worked miracles of an unusual kind: when handkerchiefs and scarves which had been in contact with his skin were carried to the sick, they were rid of their diseases and the evil spirits came out of them.’ Such miracles, no doubt, were accepted as authentic and unsinister by the Elizabethan reader. ‘But,’ continues the account, ‘some strolling Jewish exorcists tried their hand at using the name of the Lord Jesus on those possessed by evil spirits; they would say, “I adjure you by Jesus whom Paul proclaims”. There were seven sons of Sceva, a Jewish chief priest, who were using this method, when the evil spirit answered back and said, “Jesus I acknowledge, and I know about Paul, but who are you?” And the man with the evil spirit flew at them, overpowered them all, and handled them with such violence that they ran out of the house stripped and battered. This became known to everybody in Ephesus … Moreover many of those who had become believers came and openly confessed that they had been using magical spells. And a good many of those who formerly practised magic collected their books and burnt them publicly’ (Acts 19.11-19). Now the Menaechmi is almost completely lacking in a supernatural dimension. When a character is bewildered he complains he is being mocked, or tricked, or insulted; or that another person is asleep, or dreaming, or drunk, or raving mad; but he hardly ever claims that the mysterious events are due to witchcraft.¹⁶ In Shakespeare, however, a sequence of strange events reveals the terrifying duality of the world—a world in which Satan and his followers are in perpetual revolt against God (even though they can never hope to win). This cosmic struggle is mirrored within the human soul, which at times of crisis is in danger of being overwhelmed by the forces of evil. When possessed, the human person ceases to be ‘himself.’ Having lost his identity he no longer controls his own actions; and he faces not only a life of madness on earth, but also eternal damnation in the world to come. Such anxieties are present in the Syracusan's mind when he describes the spiritual atmosphere of Ephesus:

They say this town is full of cozenage,
As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body.

(1.2.97-100)

These suspicions seem to be borne out by the happenings which follow. Fascinated by Adriana's sister, Luciana, who unaccountably knows his name, the Syracusan concludes, only half-figuratively, that she must be a siren (3.2.47) or a mermaid (163); the town seems to be inhabited by witches (3.2.155) and sorcerers (4.3.12). So when the Courtesan accosts the Syracusan pair, using the right name, they look on her as an incarnation of the devil (4.3.43ff.). These fears are not confined to the Syracusans. The womenfolk are convinced that the Ephesian Antipholus is out of his wits, and so bring in Dr Pinch to conjure or exorcise the evil spirit.¹⁷ He duly intones

I charge thee, Satan, hous'd within this man,
To yield possession to my holy prayers,
And to thy state of darkness hie thee straight;
I conjure thee by all the saints in heaven.

(4.4.52-5)

This marks a significant elaboration of the Menaechmi, in which the doctor (though no more effective) enquires about the patient's fluid intake, and whether he suffers from flatulence; he then undertakes to give him a course of hellebore (915ff.).¹⁸ In these scenes, then, Shakespeare has taken only the slightest hint from the Menaechmi. He is much more indebted to the Acts, a source quite outside the area of the comedy, which he has exploited to enhance the farce.¹⁹

He also uses the Acts to weave the farce into the framework of a now Christianized romance. For when the ‘deranged’ Antipholus of Syracuse moves out of the Plautine comedy into the closing scenes of the play, he is taken in hand by Emilia, a serious figure who promises to treat the patient by all her ‘approved means,’ both physical and spiritual:

With wholesome syrops, drugs and holy prayers
To make of him a formal man again.

(5.1.104-5)

So the mind will be restored to normality by one who is no longer the priestess of a pagan temple, but a Christian abbess using Christian procedures.

As Shakespeare developed the outer frame into something more than romance, so he developed the inner play into something more than farce. To see how, we shall first look briefly at the Antipholus twins, contrasting them with the Menaechmi. At the beginning of Plautus' comedy, Menaechmus has been driven out of the house by his nagging wife, and as a reprisal he resolves to visit Erotium:

atque adeo, ne me nequiquam serues, ob eam industriam
hodie ducam scortum ad cenam atque aliquo condicam foras

(123-4)

In other words, ‘I’ll give you something to be suspicious about; I'll have dinner with a floozie' (scortum is a low word). Later it transpires that this is no isolated incident. Menaechmus is a familiar client of Erotium's, and she is more than a dinner partner (358f.). Again, no secret is made of their liaison; evidently there is nothing very remarkable about it. When the wife's father comes on the scene, he takes the side of his son-in-law against his daughter, whom he rebukes for being unduly possessive. In exasperation she finally says, ‘But look, he's having sex with a prostitute next door!’ (790). Disconcertingly, the father answers, ‘And he's jolly well right. Thanks to your interference he'll go there all the more often.’ After hearing more in the same vein the wife remarks with some bitterness, ‘I see I've brought you here, Father, to plead my husband's case, not mine. You're supposed to be on my side, but you're taking his.’

So much for Menaechmus. What about the Ephesian Antipholus? We know that his wife feels neglected. She complains to her sister when he fails to come home for dinner (2.1). But her trouble is more serious than this; for she has convinced herself that he is sleeping with another woman (2.1.108). In the next scene, in a highly emotional speech, she accuses Antipholus to his face of betraying her. Not surprisingly, she fails to get a satisfactory response because it is the wrong Antipholus. Meanwhile, her real husband is in Angelo's shop, seeing about a present for his wife. He is late for dinner (we are not told why), and he knows he is in for trouble.²⁰ So he asks Angelo to cover for him:

My wife is shrewish when I keep not hours;
Say that I linger'd with you at your shop
To see the making of her carcanet.

(3.1.2-4)

Eventually Antipholus, with his servant Dromio and his friend Balthasar, arrives home for dinner to find that he has been locked out. Inside, Adriana is dining with the Syracusan, whom she takes to be her husband. The row begins when the Syracusan Dromio, who is stationed inside, behind the door, exchanges abuse with his twin. Then the taunts are taken up by Luciana's maid; and finally Adriana herself appears for a brief moment—just long enough to send her husband packing

Ephesian Antipholus Are you
there, wife? You might have come before.
Adriana Your wife, sir knave? Go,
get you from the door!

(3.1.63-4)

After rounding off the couplet, she flounces out, leaving Antipholus fuming with suspicion. Balthasar persuades him not to make a rumpus by breaking down the door with a crowbar; but Antipholus insists on registering a protest:

I know a wench of excellent discourse,
Pretty and witty; wild and yet, too, gentle;
There will we dine. This woman that I mean,
My wife (but I protest without desert)
Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal;
To her we will to dinner.

(3.1.109-14)

So Antipholus asserts that he has gone to the woman because she is good company, and that (in spite of his wife's suspicions) he has not slept with her. If Shakespeare had meant to cast doubt on this, he could have done so through an expression of polite surprise on the part of Balthasar. But he lets the assertion stand; so for the moment one is inclined to give Antipholus the benefit of the doubt. In spite of his quick temper and his thoughtless lack of punctuality, Antipholus is therefore perceptibly superior to Menaechmus, who was a glutton, a liar, a thief, and a fornicator.

We shall see in a moment how the Ephesian Antipholus gradually moves beyond the Plautine romp. But first let us think for a moment about that exclusion scene. As usual, hints were supplied by the Menaechmi. In 661 Menaechmus submissively promises to return the dress to his wife. She says, in effect, ‘You'd better; otherwise you won't be let into the house’ (662). Menaechmus now has to retrieve the dress from Erotium. He is confident she will hand it over when he promises to buy her a nice new one, and that, so far from shutting him out, she will shut him in with her (671). But Erotium turns out to be much less obliging, and slams the door in his face (698). All this put Shakespeare in mind of the boisterous, but sadly fragmentary, scene in Plautus' Amphitruo, where the hero is shut out of his own house by Mercury while Jupiter is inside with Alcmena, Amphitruo's wife (1018ff.). On the basis of that scene Shakespeare created something quite new. The episode is cleverly prepared as the Ephesian and Balthasar walk home, looking forward to a belated dinner. The host modestly hopes that the food will be up to the occasion, and the guest assures him that the welcome is what really matters (3.1.19-29). Such civilities end abruptly when the door is found to be locked. There follows an interchange of lively abuse, full of the quibbles and bawdiness that Shakespeare and his audience loved. So here, following the ancient procedure of aemulatio, Shakespeare has taken on Plautus and in certain respects beaten him at his own game. For instance, when the Ephesian shouts for his maids,

Maud, Bridget, Marian, Cicely, Gillian, Ginn!

(3.1.31),

the Syracusan Dromio, from behind the locked door, improvises a jeering retort in a similar metre:

Mome, malthorse, capon, coxcomb, idiot, patch!

The exchanges develop into classical stichomythia as one line answers another. And each riposte gains further sharpness when Shakespeare makes it the second member of a rhymed couplet:

Ephesian Dromio What patch
is made our porter? My master stays in the street.
Syracusan Dromio Let him walk from
whence he came, lest he catch cold on's feet.
Ephesian Antipholus Who talks within
there? ho, open the door.
Syracusan Dromio Right, sir, I'll
tell you when, and you'll tell me wherefore.
Ephesia Antipholus Wherefore? for
my dinner; I have not dined today.
Syracusan Dromio Nor today here you
must not; come again when you may.

(36-41)

Again, as the altercation develops, Shakespeare brings in five different participants. This free-for-all is made possible because the focus has been moved from Amphitruo's bedroom to Antipholus' dining-room. In its new setting, and with its new characters, the exclusion scene has lost its element of theological burlesque, and with it the underlying bawdiness of its situation.²¹ Nevertheless, it anchors the Ephesian Antipholus firmly within the context of a Plautine farce.

But as the play progresses, Antipholus begins to acquire another dimension. From the Syracusan's speech in 4.3 we infer that his twin is a popular figure in the city:

There's not a man I meet but does salute me
As if I were their well-acquainted friend,
And everyone doth call me by my name:
Some tender money to me, some invite me,
Some other give me thanks for kindnesses,
Some offer me commodities to buy.

(1-6)

More evidence in favour of Antipholus is supplied in Act 5 by Angelo, who says he is a man

Of very reverend reputation …
Of credit infinite, highly belov'd,
Second to none that lives here in the city.

(5.1.5-7)

More evidence still comes from the Duke, who (somewhat to our surprise) tells Adriana ‘Long since thy husband serv'd me in my wars’ (5.1.61); this is subsequently elaborated by Antipholus himself, who reminds the Duke how he once protected him on the battlefield:

When I bestrid thee in the wars, and took
Deep scars to save thy life.

(5.1.192-3)

So the closer he comes to meeting his father, the nobler and less farcical Antipholus is made to appear.

We now come to the Syracusan Antipholus. He also belongs to two literary worlds. Though more dignified than Menaechmus the Seeker, he becomes the primary victim of comic error. Perhaps understandably, his reason is not able to cope with all that happens, and, as noted above, he concludes that the entire city is bewitched. His comic status is also shown by the verbal foolery which he carries on with the two Dromios. His status in the romance, on the other hand, is shown by his rapturous courtship of Luciana (3.2.29ff.). To span these two worlds, Shakespeare has given him a suitably elastic character.

When he first appears (1.2), he tells Dromio to go to the inn with the money. Dromio jokes: ‘many a man would take the money and go for good.’ As Dromio exits, Antipholus describes him as ‘a trusty villain’—a phrase in which ‘trusty’—is seriously meant and ‘villain’ is just good-natured banter. A little later, after an altercation with Dromio's twin, Antipholus concludes that his servant has allowed himself to be cheated out of the cash:

Upon my life, by some device or other
The villain is o'er-raught of all my money.

(1.2.95-6)

This time, ‘villain’ is seriously meant, and Dromio's trustworthiness has apparently evaporated. Before we look at the comic scene which causes the change-around, let us go back again to Antipholus' description of Dromio:

A trusty villain sir, that very oft,
When I am dull with care and melancholy,
Lightens my humour with his merry jests.

(1.2.19-21)

So there is a gloomy side to Antipholus' character—one which we hear of half way through the scene:

He that commends me to my own content
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.

(1.2.33-4)

In a famous simile, Antipholus goes on to compare himself to a drop of water which is lost in the ocean. As so often, the germ of the idea is found in the Menaechmi, where Messenio exclaims that the two twins are as alike as one drop of water (or milk) to another (1089). But Shakespeare uses the image to adumbrate the serious motif of the fluid self, which may be (regrettably) lost in the mass of humanity or (agreeably) merged with the self of a loved one. At present the gloomy sense predominates, for up to now Antipholus' quest has been futile, and he is in low spirits. So already the Syracusan is a more rounded figure than his Plautine prototype.

Yet this melancholy mood can, we are told, be lightened by Dromio's wit. So when Antipholus meets the wrong Dromio (1.2.41ff.) and obtains a sequence of absurd replies, he assumes his servant is trying to cheer him up. But at present he is not amenable to jokes and so reacts angrily (58, 68, 72, 80). As the bewildered Ephesian Dromio continues to talk nonsense, Antipholus loses his temper and begins to beat him: ‘There, take you that, sir knave!’ (92).

After 2.1, which is arranged in the sequence serious (1-43), comic (44-85), serious (86-116), Antipholus of Syracuse meets his own Dromio in 2.2. Still angry, he beats him once more for joking at the wrong moment. But a change of mood is signalled when Antipholus asks ‘But say, sir, is it dinner-time?’ (54).²² A series of riddles and puns ensues during which Antipholus is coaxed into good humour in the very way described in 1.2.19-21 (quoted above); he is even given the satisfaction of having the last word (2.2.107). So these two comic encounters have a chiastic structure in that the first moves from good humour to anger and beating, and the second moves the other way.

In the dialogue between Luciana and the Syracusan (3.2) the romantic side of the latter's personality is fully revealed. I offer a paraphrase of the first sixteen lines of his speech (29-44): ‘In your knowledge (as proved by your use of my name) and in your beauty you represent no less of a marvel than the earth itself; in fact you are more divine than anything earthly. Explain to my dull understanding the inner meaning of your puzzling words (i.e., 1-28). Why are you trying to baffle my soul which can apprehend the truth (viz. that we are meant for each other)? If you are a divinity, transform me and I shall become your slave. If I am who I think I am, then your sister is not my wife. It is to you that I am drawn.’ Antipholus speaks of Luciana as a mermaid or siren, and longs to drown in her embrace (51)—a more explicitly erotic kind of self-surrender. Then, in language of quasi-religious adoration, he hails her as

Mine eye's clear eye, my dear heart's dearer heart,
My food, my fortune, and my sweet hope's aim,
My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim.

(62-4)

Finally he begs her to be his wife.

The speech is comic in that the divine knowledge ascribed to Luciana is an illusion. Though she calls him by the right name (2), she is in error about his identity; and erring, as we know, is a human, not a divine habit. Moreover, Antipholus' language is amusing; for, although magnificent, it flies too high. This is the hyperbole of the infatuated, expressing a state which the world smiles at indulgently (and envies). Yet the speech projects feelings of sincere devotion, and this may suggest an analogy with the early scenes of a Greek romance before the lovers have been forced apart. Nevertheless, Shakespeare could not have found an impassioned address like that of Antipholus in his Greek sources. Likewise, though the Greek novels have certain religious overtones,²³ the Christian element in the speech (‘My sole earth's heaven, and my heaven's claim’) is not classical, but late Latin or medieval, in origin. This innovation corresponds to the metamorphosis of Diana's priestess (as found in the Apollonius romance) into the abbess of the priory.

Continuing to apply his technique of contrasts, Shakespeare now describes a very different scene of courtship—one which by its grossness offers a parody of Antipholus' sentimental raptures.²⁴ The narrator is the Syracusan Dromio, who comes on stage panting (like the traditional seruus currens) after escaping the attentions of Nell, Adriana's overweight kitchen maid. Antipholus here encourages, and enters into, the coarse humour of his servant as he moves from the woman's fatness to her globe-like figure, and from there to the countries located on her body. Granted, there is more to this foolery than simple vulgarity; some of the geographical references have a contemporary political application.²⁵ Nevertheless, this scene shows once more the farcical aspect of Antipholus' personality.

Yet it is the serious Antipholus who remains at the end of the play. After the ‘deranged’ comic victim has taken refuge with Dromio in the priory he (like Egeon) is saved and returned to the everyday world by the good offices of Emilia. But it is a happier and more complete world, for Antipholus has found not only his brother (as Menaechmus the Seeker did); he has also found his parents, so that the play ends in a family reunion. And that is not all. Though he can scarcely believe it, one of Antipholus' strange experiences turns out not to have been an illusion, and this raises hopes for a happy future. Addressing Luciana, he says

                                        What I told you then,
I hope I shall have leisure to make good,
If this be not a dream I see and hear.

(5.1.374-6)

Before we leave the Antipholus twins, one more point should be made about their sexual behaviour. During the exclusion scene there is no suggestion that the Syracusan tries to take advantage of Adriana, as Jupiter does with Alcmena in Amphitruo. He does not find her attractive

She that doth call me husband, even my soul
Doth for a wife abhor

(3.2.157-8);

and anyhow one assumes that he has eyes only for Luciana, who is present throughout (2.1.6; 2.2.187 and 219; 5.1.207). Since Adriana does not become sexually involved with the Syracusan, her husband's wild suspicions are completely unfounded (4.4.57, 61, 99, 122; 5.1.197ff.). And even if she had, she would have been no more guilty than Alcmena, who acted out of ignorance. As for the Ephesian Antipholus, he has not attempted to seduce his sister-in-law, in spite of what Luciana and Adriana believe (4.2.1ff.). In financial matters, the Syracusan Dromio did not lose his master's money (1.2), and Angelo did not attempt to defraud the Ephesian Antipholus (4.1.49), or vice versa. The whole play is about misconceptions. Therefore, in spite of some doubts—doubts which are raised when Luciana later speaks of Antipholus ‘demeaning himself’ (5.1.87-8)—it would seem formally inappropriate if Adriana were right in accusing her husband of infidelity (3.1.111-13). If she is wrong, then all the sexual relationships in the play take place within the context of Christian courtship and marriage; even the much-mocked Nell pursues Dromio of Syracuse because she genuinely believes he is her fiancé (3.2.140, 154). As a result, Shakespeare, unlike Plautus, has no central role for the prostitute, and she dwindles into an anonymous minor figure.

We noted earlier how Shakespeare enhanced the farce by admitting a second pair of twins, by adapting the exclusion scene from Amphitruo, and by acknowledging the influence of the supernatural. We have also seen how, by reducing the dramatic function of fornication and adding a more serious dimension to the character of the Antipholus twins, he created something more complex and substantial, and at the same time made it possible to weave the Plautine farce into the now Christianized framework of the Greek romance. We must now consider how the whole process was assisted by Shakespeare's most original achievements—namely, the transformation of the nagging matrona into the many-sided and wholly human Adriana, and the creation of her different but equally credible sister.

To prepare the ground, we revert, for the last time, to St Paul and Ephesus. In his epistle to the Christian community in the city, which lays down the rules for godly marriage, Paul first of all condemns fornication: ‘But fornication, and all uncleanness … let it not be once named among you’ (Ephesians 5.3); … ‘no whoremonger, nor unclean person … hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God’ (Ephesians 5.5). Then, moving on to intramarital relations, Paul says, ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church’ (22-3); ‘Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it’ (25); ‘Let every one of you … so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband’ (33).

With these precepts in mind, we return to The Comedy of Errors. At the opening of Act 2 it is two o'clock. Instead of starting dinner and letting Antipholus eat his cold when he arrives, Adriana has worked herself into a state, first, because her husband is free to wander wherever he pleases, whereas she must kick her heels at home. The second reason does not at once emerge, because Adriana and her sister energetically debate the first.

Luciana Good sister let us
dine and never fret;
A man is master of his liberty.

(2.1.6-7)

Adriana Why should their liberty
than ours be more?
Luciana Because their business still
lies out o' door

(2.1.11)

(i.e., the husband's sphere is the city at large, the wife's is the home). As far as the working class was concerned, one doubts how far that division actually held good in London or Rome; but like Menaechmus, Antipholus is supposedly a respectable bourgeois; and so Luciana's acquiescence represents the conventional middle-class attitude. But Adriana rejects the convention. She retorts, in effect, ‘when I treat him that way he doesn't like it.’ Whereupon her sister irritates her still more by reminding her of the Pauline doctrine that husbands ‘are masters of their families, and their lords’ (24). ‘Huh,’ says Adriana, ‘that's what prevents you from marrying; if you did marry, you'd insist on having some authority’ (26, 28). But Luciana holds her ground: ‘Ere I learn love I'll practise to obey’ (29). This, of course, recalls the marriage-lines in The Book of Common Prayer (1549), where the bride promises to ‘obey … serve … love … honour and keep’ her husband. And it is interesting to see (as one might have guessed) that already in Shakespeare's time the idea was not accepted everywhere without protest.

Luciana's words now prod Adriana into revealing the second reason for her disquiet.

How if your husband start some other where?

(30)

Luciana again counsels patience:

Till he come home again I would forbear.

‘All very well for you to recommend patience,’ says Adriana, ‘you've got nothing to be impatient about.’ Dromio now enters. He was sent to fetch Antipholus, but failed to do so because, of course, he was speaking to the Syracusan, who gave him a smack on the ear. Adriana threatens to give him another, and sends him off again.²⁶ Luciana once more chides her for impatience (86), whereupon Adriana reveals that she is not only angry but miserable; and it's all because she thinks her husband is consorting with another woman. This moving speech is punctuated by Luciana, not with indignant remarks about Antipholus’ alleged infidelity, but with reflections on the folly of jealousy (102, 116).

The theme of jealousy is resumed and developed in 2.2, where Adriana remonstrates with Antipholus in a way which shows that her distress arises from passionate affection allied to a rather pathetic sense of insecurity. In this most eloquent appeal she says, in effect, ‘how would you like it if I were disloyal to you?’

How dearly would it touch thee to the quick,
Shouldst thou but hear I were licentious?
And that this body, consecrate to thee,
By ruffian lust should be contaminate?
Wouldst thou not spit at me, and spurn at me,
And hurl the name of husband in my face?

(130-5)

All very moving, but, ironically, the appeal is addressed to the wrong man. More ironically still, the power of Adriana's appeal persuades the Syracusan to enter her house for dinner; and that leads directly to the pandemonium of the exclusion scene and the subsequent taunts of ‘dissembling harlot’ and ‘unhappy strumpet’ (4.4.99, 122).

We have already touched on the scene where the Syracusan pays court to Luciana (3.2). It begins when she makes a direct allusion to Ephesians 5.25 (‘Husbands, love your wives’ etc.):

And may it be that you have quite forgot
A husband's office? shall, Antipholus,
Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot?

(1-3)

Then a good-hearted attempt to combine realism with charity: are you really no longer in love with Adriana? Even if you married her for her money you might at least treat her with some decency. If you are carrying on with someone else, you ought to pretend that you're still fond of her and not hurt her feelings. But Antipholus continues to pour out his devotion and finally urges her to marry him. At this point Luciana quickly intervenes

O soft, sir, hold you still;
I'll fetch my sister to get her good will.

(69-70)

I'm not sure what this means—perhaps no more than that Luciana will fetch her sister and tell her what has happened, so as to avoid putting herself in a false position. At any rate by 4.2 Luciana has reported the whole incident to Adriana. So much for her earlier contention that her sister should be kept in the dark. It looks as if secrecy was possible only as long as Antipholus was thought to be having an affair with just another woman; but once it appeared that Luciana herself was the object of his affections, then the matter could no longer be kept from her sister. In this later scene (4.2), Luciana perhaps reveals more than she intends; for it now becomes clear that she found Antipholus rather attractive, and was not just shocked, but also flattered, by his address:

Adriana With what persuasion
did he tempt thy love?
Luciana With words that in an honest suit might move:
First he did praise my beauty, then my speech.
Adriana (anxiously) Did'st speak
him fair?
Luciana Have patience, I beseech.

(13-16)

Patience again—and one notes that Luciana hasn't answered the question, though in fact she had said nothing to lead Antipholus on. This reticence provokes an explosion from Adriana:

He is deformed, crooked, old and sere,
Ill faced, worse bodied, shapeless everywhere;
Vicious, ungentle, foolish, blunt, unkind,
Stigmatical in making, worse in mind.

(19-22)

Luciana (with feline softness):

Who would be jealous then of such a one?

Adriana recovers herself and admits the truth:

Ah but I think him better than I say.

So once again Adriana's jealousy is seen to arise from anxiety and overpossessiveness, not mere vindictiveness.

In the Menaechmi, when the matrona apprehends her (supposed) husband carrying the stolen dress, she sends for her father to come and deal with him (736). The old fellow knows that in matrimonial squabbles there are usually faults on both sides (765ff.), but he treats his daughter unsympathetically:

Quotiens monstraui tibi, uiro ut morem geras,
quid ille faciat, ne id obserues, quo eat, quid rerum gerat

(788-9)²⁷

How often have I told you to let your husband have his way, not to be spying on what he does, where he goes, and what he's up to?

This is a clumsy approach; for, whether the wife's nagging is the cause or the effect of Menaechmus' fornication, her father weighs straight in and directly alleges that she is at fault. The procedure of the abbess in 5.1 is altogether more subtle. In attempting to diagnose the source of Antipholus' disorder, she asks Adriana if it could be loss of money, or bereavement, or unlawful love. Adriana fastens on the last: ‘some love that drew him oft from home’ (56).

Abbess You should for that
have reprehended him.
Adriana Why, so I did.
Abbess Ay, but not rough enough.
Adriana As roughly as my modesty
would let me.
Abbess Haply in private.
Adriana And in assemblies too.
Abbess Ay, but not enough.
AdrianaIt was the copy of our conference;
In bed he slept not for my urging it,
At board he fed not for my urging it;
Alone, it was the subject of my theme;
In company I often glanc'd at it;
Still did I tell him it was vile and bad.

(57-67)

And now the trap closes:

Abbess And thereof came it
that the man was mad.

The abbess now goes through all the points confessed by Adriana, and concludes

The consequence is, then, thy jealous fits
Hath scar'd thy husband from the use of wits.

(85-6)

All this is too much for Luciana. Although the abbess has said little more than what she herself said earlier (‘Self-harming jealousy! fie, beat it hence’ in 2.1.102; ‘How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!’ in 2.1.116), she is not prepared to hear her sister criticized by this strange woman. So she intervenes indignantly

She never reprehended him but mildly,
When he demean'd himself rough, rude, and wildly.

(87-8)

Then, turning to Adriana,

Why bear you these rebukes and answer not?

Adriana (quietly)

She did betray me to mine own reproof

(90)

—an interesting switch of emotional positions, in which Luciana becomes indignant and Adriana acquiescent. For the audience, the pleasure derived from this piece of moral enlightenment is only sharpened by the knowledge that the supposedly disordered male, who has given rise to it all, is the wrong man.

This clever psychological interplay takes us far from the Plautine comedy with which we began. Clearly the Menaechmi is altogether less complex and less serious. But before we say farewell to it we should acknowledge it for what it is. First, it is a work of great metrical virtuosity, consisting of speech (senarii), recitative (septenarii or octonarii chanted to a pipe) and song (various metres sung to the accompaniment of a pipe). Therefore, although the music is gone, and even professional Latinists are seldom at home with the lyric metres, one has to think of the Menaechmi as something akin to a musical comedy. This whole aspect of the work has been largely ignored in the present essay. Second, the Menaechmi is a skilful arrangement of comic scenes based on mistaken identity. No doubt some of the credit for this should go to the author of the Greek ‘original.’²⁸ But we should beware of the prejudice which maintains that whatever is formally satisfactory in Plautus must come from his Greek model, while everything clumsy is Plautus' own. Along with the dramaturgical skill goes a certain homogeneity. Since, in dramatic terms, the Menaechmi does not pretend to be anything more than a heartless romp performed by two-dimensional comic types, it remains all of a piece. One has the impression that Plautus knew exactly what he was doing and did it well.

With Shakespeare, the case was different. As a young experimental dramatist, producing a new amalgam of comedy and romance, he could not be expected to attain formal perfection. An instance of imbalance may be seen in the treatment of the Syracusan Antipholus. As Luciana speaks to him in 3.2 he listens with increasing fascination. We cannot be sure how much he has taken in. Very little, perhaps, until she says

Then, gentle brother, get you in again;
Comfort my sister, cheer her, call her wife.

(25-6)

‘Gentle brother’—the phrase stuck when all else was perhaps a vague memory:

And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,
Did call me brother.

(5.1.373-4)

We have already heard how the Syracusan

At eighteen years became inquisitive
After his brother.

(1.1.125-6)

He tells us as much himself in 1.2:

So I, to find a mother and a brother,
In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself.

(39-40)

But now, long before he discovers his twin, here is someone who addresses him as ‘brother,’ and whom he greets as ‘mine own self's better part’ (3.2.61). Finally he says,

Call thyself sister, sweet, for I am thee.

(66)

The blend of souls is no less complete than when ‘a drop of water … seeks another drop’ and falls ‘to find his fellow forth’ (1.2.35, 37). In the outcome, the discovery of Luciana as a soulmate detracts rather from the Syracusan's eventual meeting with his brother. Granted, Plautus drags out his recognition scene too long. Between the moment when the astonished Messenio cries ‘Good Lord! What do I see?’ (1062) and the embrace of the two twins (1132) no fewer than seventy lines have elapsed. But Shakespeare surely goes too far in the other direction. At the climactic moment of their reunion the brothers do not exchange a single word. Almost as odd is the fact that Emilia addresses only three lines to her sons (5.1.400-2); and they do not speak to her at all. It must be added, however, that in an actual production there is so much going on (with Egeon, Emilia, Angelo, the Duke, two Antipholus twins, two Dromios, the two sisters, and others all on stage) that the anti-climax is barely noticed.

If we are emphasizing (as we must), not Shakespeare's deficiencies, but his amazingly original achievement in The Comedy of Errors, our last word must be about his characters. As we know, the characters of Shakespearian and Greek drama have gone through many vicissitudes in this century. They were turned loose from the text by A. C. Bradley and treated as real people; then rounded up and reincarcerated by L. C. Knights. They have been assimilated to the poet's language, as though they were a special kind of image or metaphor; treated as projections of the plot, or as fluid figures varying according to the rhetoric of the situation; more recently some critics have seen them as ‘written’ by the sociopolitical conditions of their day.

This is no moment to start a discussion of such ideas. But let us recall one point made earlier. While we know that Menaechmus frequently consorted with Erotium (358-72), we do not know how far his wife was to blame. Plautus leaves it open, and we assume he does so because the question is of no interest to him. Nor is it of any interest to us. In The Comedy of Errors the question of Antipholus' innocence remains unresolved. We were inclined to believe him when he told Balthasar that Adriana's accusations were unfounded (3.1.112). Yet later Luciana maintains that on more than one occasion ‘he demean'd himself rough, rude, and wildly’ (5.1.88). To dispose of this charge we have to assume that Luciana has been led by her indignant loyalty into making a baseless allegation. Now both these answers cannot be right. Both may be wrong, in the sense that Shakespeare himself may not have considered the question; perhaps he never envisaged or intended such speculation. But this much, I think, can be said. If I am wrong in raising this kind of problem, then countless readers over the last four centuries have been wrong too. And if such conjecture is misguided (as it may be, for the text does not provide the answer), it is just the kind of mistake that Shakespeare, throughout his oeuvre, encourages us to make. That beguiling spell is already at work in The Comedy of Errors.

Notes

1. The first performance of The Comedy of Errors was on 28 December 1594. A free adaptation of the Menaechmi by William Warner (without the Prologue) appeared in 1595; it was reprinted, with the Latin text en face, by W.H. D. Rouse in the Shakespeare Library series, and by Bullough (1957, 12-39). Though Warner's manuscript had been handed round among his friends before 1595, there is no evidence that Shakespeare used it. Quiller-Couch and Dover Wilson (1962, 75f.) believed that Shakespeare worked from an intermediate play (The Historie of Error) which was performed on 1 January 1577. Most scholars, however, prefer the view of Baldwin (1944) that Shakespeare read the Menaechmi in Latin, possibly in Lambinus' edition (1576) and with the help of Cooper's dictionary (1565). While agreeing that Plautus was Shakespeare's main source, Salingar (1974, 66-7) is inclined to think that he worked towards Plautus from stories like those of St Clement and St Eustace, or that the farcical and romantic stories were present together in his mind from the beginning. Neither idea is incompatible with the present essay.

2. After greeting the audience, the speaker of the Prologue says apporto uobis Plautum—lingua, non manu, ‘I bring you Plautus—on my tongue, not in my arms,’ a mild pleasantry, extended in the appeal for attention which follows: quaeso ut benignis accipiatis auribus, ‘kindly receive him with favourable ears.’ He then assures the audience that, unlike the writers of comedies who always claim that their plays are set in Athens, he will state quite frankly that the present piece takes place in Sicily—which it doesn't. Literal truth has been sacrificed for the sake of a verbal play, sicilicissitat being a Plautine concoction based on the Greek verbal ending….

3. He steps into a rapidum fluuium, whereupon rapidus raptori pueri subduxit pedes / apstraxitque hominem in maxumam malam crucem (65-6). A lame translation would be: ‘The swift-flowing river swept the legs from under the boy's kidnapper and carried him away to utter destruction’—lame, because rapidus bounces off raptori, subducere has the poetically just sense of ‘steal,’ and the phrase in malam crucem recalls the punishment meted out to criminals.

4. The nominative form Epidamnus occurs only here in the play. Shakespeare calls it Epidamnum.

5. Whatever innuendo may have been conveyed by the actor, the text contains no pun on peniculus = ‘little penis.’ Nor is the opportunity for such humour exploited later, when Menaechmus the Seeker asks Peniculus his name (498ff.). In 285 Messenio takes a peniculus out of his travelling bag. Some commentators assure us it is a clothes brush; others think it is a small sponge, the equivalent of a toilet roll.

6. Segal 1969, 147.

7. Perhaps ‘half decent’ is as far as we can go in view of 268, where Messenio is said to be a magnus amator mulierum (cf. 703).

8. See 1.1.132-6. ‘Egeon,’ a name found in Lily's Grammar, was doubtless chosen as being appropriate for a traveller in the eastern Mediterranean.

9. In Northrop Frye's fifth, or romantic, phase of comedy, ‘the usual symbol for the lower or chaotic world is the sea’ (1957, 184). Frye includes The Comedy of Errors and The Tempest as examples of ‘sea’ comedies. Very well; but it is in the romantic framework of the play that such symbolism occurs. There is no sea-rescue in the comedy proper, just as there is no sea-rescue in the Menaechmi. For that, or something like it, we have to go to the Rudens, which does contain a shipwreck, and hence prefigures The Tempest. One can talk of an element of romance in the Rudens, even though the romantic novel had not evolved as early as Plautus (late third, early second century bc). One can also talk, more generally, of elements of romance derived from Euripides, employed in Greek New Comedy, and adapted by Roman playwrights. Such considerations, however, have little bearing on Shakespeare's specific debt, at that early date, to the Menaechmi. For the Greek original of the Menaechmi has been lost (see n. 28 below). Shakespeare had only Plautus' version; and the romantic element in that, as we have seen, goes little beyond the basic theme of ‘lost and found’.

10. The Greek romances were ignored, partly because they were thought to be late (some as late as the sixth century ad), partly because the literary quality of the genre was not valued. Modern opinion tentatively dates the surviving specimens from the first century bc (the Ninus fragments) to the fourth century ad (Helio-dorus). New translations of all the material are available in the admirable collection edited by Reardon 1989.

11. Heliodorus, ed. princ. 1534; French translation by J. Amyot 1547; Latin translation by S. Warschewiczki 1551; English translation by T. Underdowne based on the Latin 1569 (or 1570). Longus, French translation by J. Amyot 1559; English version of Amyot by A. Day 1587; ed. princ. 1598. Achilles Tatius, first complete translation into Italian by F. A. Coccio 1550; French translation by B. Comingeois 1568; English translation by W. Burton 1597. For a more complete list see Gesner 1970, 154ff.

12. The most recent text is G. Schmeling's edition (Leipzig 1988). Perry holds, with some others, that the original version was in Latin (1967, 304-5, 324). This view has not won general assent; but even if Perry is right, the novel is derived from the Greek genre in setting, structure, and ethos.

13. For bibliographical information see Gesner 1970, 155-7; an Old English version in an eleventh-century manuscript has been studied by Goolden (1958).

14. Quiller-Couch, xxiv.

15. One assumes that the goldsmith got his name from the gold coin called an ‘angel,’ which was first minted in the reign of Edward IV and bore an image of the archangel Michael.

16. Before he sees his patient the doctor inquires whether he is laruatus, ‘possessed’ (890). More indirect is the reference to pigs (289, cf. 314), which were sacrificed to secure release from madness.

17. For exorcism in the sixteenth century see Baldwin 1965, 37-46, and Greenblatt 1988, 94-128.

18. For the two varieties of hellebore (a drug used to purge the body of the supposedly harmful humour) see O'Brien-Moore 1924, 30-6.

19. ‘Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen … in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea’ (2 Corinthians 11.25-6). How, one wonders, would the saintly man have responded had he been told that his experiences were the very stuff of fiction?

20. The germ of the idea occurs in Men. 600-1, where Menaechmus is late for dinner with Erotium: ‘She's angry with me now, I suppose; the dress I gave her will calm her down’.

21. It was also, of course, from Amphitruo that Shakespeare took the pair of look-alike servants. This increased the possibilities of misunderstanding. (False identifications in Shakespeare outnumber those in Plautus by nearly three to one.) Moreover, with a second set of twins and two parents all pretence at credibility is abandoned.

22. This cluster of ideas associated with time could have been suggested by Menaechmi 137-40, where Menaechmus hails Peniculus:

    Men. O mea Commoditas, O mea Opportunitas salue.
    Pen. salue.
    Men. quid agis?
    Pen. teneo dextera genium meum.
    Men. non potuisti magis per tempus mi aduenire quam aduenis.
    Pen. ita ego soleo: commoditatis omnis articulos scio.

    (‘Hello! You're the very personification of all that's timely and opportune!’ ‘Hello!’ ‘How and what are you doing?’ ‘Holding on to my guardian angel.’ ‘You couldn't have come at a better moment for me.’ ‘That's my way; I know all the nicks of time.’)

23. A divinity like Isis or Artemis often presides over the characters' fortunes. This divinity assumes a greater importance in Christian romances like the pseudo-Clementine Recognitiones. See Perry 1967, Appendix 1.

24. A similar purpose is served by the mechanicals' performance of the Pyramus and Thisbe story in A Midsummer Night's Dream; see Rudd 1979, 185.

25. See Baldwin 1965, 1-17.

26. There do not seem to be any overt references to what Paul says about the treatment of servants: ‘servants, be obedient to them that are your masters … And ye masters, do the same things unto them, putting away threatening’ (Ephesians 6.5 and 9 in the Geneva Bible of 1560). However that may be, one notices that the two Dromios collect far more in the way of threats and blows than Messenio does—another example of Shakespeare being more Plautine than Plautus himself.

27. Cf. 110ff.

28. We do not know what play the Menaechmi is based on. At least five comedies were entitled ‘Male Twins’ and one was called ‘Doubles’. See Edmonds 1959 and 1961, 2.50, 396, 594, 626; 3.236 and 274.

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