"We came into the world like brother and brother,
And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another."
The Comedy of Errors is a first-rate entree to the Bard. The timeless puns, jokes, gags, and suspense provide the ingredients for one of Shakespeare's most delightful comedies.
When two sets of twins, separated and lost to each other, all end up in the rowdy, boisterous city of Ephesus, the stage is set for mix-ups, mayhem, and mistaken identity.
The backstory: a wealthy woman gives birth to identical twins. She and her husband think it would be just darling to have identical twins of the same age to act as the boys' servants; so they "purchase" a set of identical twins from an underclass family, and the rich boys now have identical twin servants.
The result is a marvelous mix-up of merriment and farce, all touched by Shakespeare's inimitable vision of the relationship between art and life, dreams and the waking world.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) was an English playwright poet, and actor, regarded as the world's pre-eminent dramatist, and the greatest writer in the English language. Author of such timeless works as Romeo and Juliet, Othello, Hamlet and King Lear, he is often called the "Bard of Avon," England's national poet.
