A Romantic 'Comedy of Errors'

One of my minor hobby horses is defending some of Shakespeare’s earlier plays that are frequently given short critical shrift, particularly two early comedies. Strip away your expectations about The Taming of the Shrew and you will find a genuine love story, about two dark and damaged characters unexpectedly finding each other, and love, in what appears to be a most unlikely match with one another. And step back from the familiar but still workable farce of A Comedy of Errors, and you will find a play structured very much like the late romances, and striking many of the same deep chords.

A Comedy of Errors begins, after all, with a death sentence on Aegeon, merchant of Syracuse, who has come to Ephesus in search of his lost son. Well, one of his lost sons – as he explains, he lost one of his twin boys, along with his wife, in a shipwreck when his son was still a small child; and the boy he was able to keep set off several years ago, when he was grown, in search of his twin, never to return. And so the father ventured forth himself, and, having fetched up in enemy territory, he now faces a very sad end to a life of struggle and loss.

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