The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare

  And the Dromios?

  TS: The Dromios are two sides of another common aspect of ourselves: the servant. Dromio of Ephesus, like his master, is more wrapped up in the daily, material issues of home, time, food, and other people. His is a social life and his main concern is how he can get food, drink, and women without getting beaten. We can see the difference when his brother runs into the path of his master, terrified by the sexual encounter with the cook in Act 3 Scene 2. His language betrays his wide experience of travel and his terror betrays his lack of street wisdom. He knows the world but he doesn't know life and society. In that way it could be said that the Syracuse brothers are spiritually or internally wiser than their brothers while being socially or materially more naive.

  However, the similarities are as important as the differences; the same is true of the two sisters, Adriana and Luciana. They are not identical twins but they are intimate sisters who have a different experience of life and a different way of seeing marriage and duty and also of dealing with men.

  NM: The Dromios are also distinctly different. Ephesus is always being beaten by his master, feels like a victim, is treated as lowly and in consequence is often in a fury. Syracuse is a companion to his master and wants only to please him. He is especially good at lightening his master's mood when he is filled with sadness.

  PH: I think in a sense that emerges more clearly through the text, in that even though it's very confusing for Dromio of Syracuse, in some ways part of the difference is that it felt even more confusing for Dromio of Ephesus, who lives there--locked out of his own house, beaten so repeatedly for things he doesn't quite understand--so I think those differences came more from their experiences in the story.

  Very often the chaos and mistaken identity in The Comedy of Errors lends itself to the farcical. To what extent did you exploit this within your production?

  TS: Our simple approach was never to add or to exaggerate anything. We played all aspects of farce and mistaken identity as a natural part of the action and consequence of action. We didn't underplay it either; we tried to make it just so. This meant that while it was funny at times it was also strange and touching at other times. I believe that if you play the farce up you smother other possibilities, other textures and other truths. It's the same throughout Shakespeare: most strikingly with the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Stanislavski said something very important for actors: there is no different style of acting required by comedy and tragedy--simply different actions. I think that this is something directors must remember too. Laughter is a wonderful occurrence but it can be cheaply won and it can drown out other treasures.

  NM: The play is written in a commedia dell'arte mode and suggests huge amounts of slapstick. Beatings and chases and quack doctors curing fake patients abound. I wanted to evoke a very rich street life, inspired by descriptions of London in Shakespeare's day. The character of Doctor Pinch, a quack doctor, became key to the story. We began the play with Egeon arriving in the harbor of Ephesus early one morning just as Doctor Pinch and his entourage are coming into town. The whole town pours out onto the streets to welcome him and watch him work his magical medical cures. We worked with an actor from Theatre de Complicite on an exercise called the "flock of birds," or "shoal of fish." This meant groups of characters would throng together and move as a swirling organism, following the action. It gave a heightened quality to the play, animated the street scenes, and gave great scope for exaggerated characters, costumes, and extreme hairstyles.

  PH: Very definitely, and it's partly why I was drawn to it when I was asked to do it. Some people might argue that it's one of Shakespeare's most comedic of plays, in the sense that the situation, and to a certain extent the characters, are almost completely out of the world of commedia dell'arte, which is the style of theater that farce emerged out of. I was very keen to embrace that, and we spent a lot of time exploring and pushing that as far as we possibly could. So ultimately, for me, as long as the actors are committed to what they are doing, and ironically, that they're serious about what they're doing--in some ways more serious than normal, because they have to be deadly serious about the situation for us to find it funny--then we're able to push it quite far. So, for instance, when the Abbess comes on dressed up in full nun's habit and tries to quieten everybody down, she stamps her feet, and by stamping her feet this develops into a tap dance, which the whole company joins in with. And that for me is symptomatic of what the production is about really: if someone said "What moment defines the show?" I would say, "It's when a nun tap-dances and then everybody else tap-dances!" We kept talking about how Ephesus is a world which is infected by a madness, and the arrival of these two sets of twins turns the world mad for twenty-four hours. So yes, we definitely embraced that side of it.

  The women in the play can be seen to embody female archetypes-- the shrewish wife, the idealistic maid, the whore, the nun. Did you find it difficult in your production to make these parts more rounded characters, or did the stereotypes add to the comedy?

  TS: The stereotypical nature of the women in the play is akin to the stereotypical nature of the men but more so, which is rather like most of Shakespeare's plays in that the women are not as fully expressed characters (with some few great exceptions). In the case of this play the use of strong types throughout the population of the play is part of what makes it what it is: an exquisite and satisfyingly simple comedy. The great richness of Shakespeare peeks through, however, and there is ample in the characters of all four women from which to evolve a total sense of living character onstage.

  NM: It is true that these characters are archetypes, but I feel the best route to comedy is through taking people seriously and being very specific about what drives them. When their drives or aspirations are identified, the next step is to intensify those drives, making the characters obsessive to the point of becoming absurd or comic. This means real hopes and fears and longings feed the high comedy.

  PH: I think there's something quite pure about the fact that those archetypes are there. Now obviously I think because of the actors I had and the work we did that it hopefully becomes more detailed and rounded as you explore the play, but I certainly embraced the types they were, because you're right, they are types--the put-upon servant, the shrewish wife. They are there, and from my point of view it would be foolish to ignore that, or, to a certain extent, to try to apply too much psychology to that, because a lot of the fun in the play comes from quite simple interactions; they just happen to go wrong.

  Law and order frame the play through the words of the duke, but in your production to what extent did this framing device serve to make order of the prior chaos?

  TS: In our production the law and the authority that comes with it was simply an expression of the social context of Ephesus. The wild emptiness of the world experienced by Egeon and his son and slave is captured and made dangerous by the strong society of Ephesus. Both threaten the other: the law of the land and the conflict between the lands gives edge to the situation of the visitors while the strange happenings brought about by the twins overwhelm life in the city for a day. Even the duke cannot untangle it. It is the Abbess who provides the final piece of the jigsaw, and while she is an abbess, she is also a mother and it is this that provides the potent emotional force of the ending that brings order and calm and allows social life to continue.

  9. In 1996, Tim Supple set the play "in a small square in front of a large and elegant building with a heavy wooden door"; "law and the authority that comes with it was simply an expression of the social context of Ephesus."

  NM: Shakespeare's audience would have had strong associations with the use of Ephesus as the place for the story. The Ephesians were notoriously difficult when it came to converting them to Christianity. Saint Paul's letter to the Ephesians was addressed to a rowdy, amoral, lawless lot. And a helpful source brought in by one actor explained that when a community is being converted to Christianity, there is an attempt to banish the witch doctors,
conjurors, and magicians who people have previously depended on, especially for curing ills. But the public are not quick to give up these influences in their lives. It seemed that Shakespeare was depicting a society in which that confusion was very present.

  PH: When the play opens there is a man about to be put to death, and I thought we've got to absolutely believe in this. Even though our world was stylistically influenced by this Eastern European, slightly carnivalesque world of the Kusturica films, I felt it was very important that we all committed to the idea that someone is about to lose his life, because this is a world where one man has power over life and death--the duke. So we found our own way of reflecting that, but it was something that I felt was very important, because the whole story comes out of this. I suppose the biggest thing that we did in that opening section was related to the fact that I felt it was very important that you saw this backstory, rather than it just being related by Egeon in a big speech. For me it needed to feel more cinematic, that as he started to speak we then saw this story unfold. Not just because it was a young audience, but also it's a great big long speech at the beginning of a play, and I know myself sometimes that if a play starts with a long speech I can easily go, "What's happening? What's he talking about? What's that?" And I didn't want to lose the audience at the beginning at all.

  And what about the repeated mentions of the supernatural? Was this mysticism an intrinsic part of your world of Ephesus or simply a turn of phrase to explain away disorder?

  TS: The supernatural was ever present as a possibility in our production in the music, in the mystery, and in the air. But it is far less explored than in later works so it felt wrong to make too much of it. I don't feel that the supernatural is actual, as it is in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Macbeth or The Tempest. In this play the supernatural is, in fact, the inexplicable miracle of the human story. So many lives and family histories involve remarkable narratives and coincidences such as this play exploits. The explicit references to the supernatural are both an attempt by the characters to explain what is happening and also Shakespeare playing with the legends that surrounded the Middle Eastern world. He is plugging into the pervasive belief in the supernatural that would have been shared with his audience and perhaps he was also warming up to a greater role for the spiritual world in later works.

  NM: Antipholus of Syracuse suddenly remembers and shares with the audience the reputation of Ephesus as a town full of "sorcerers that change the mind, Soul-killing witches that deform the body, Disguised cheaters," etc. Our production brought these elements out by introducing Doctor Pinch initially as a quack and including street gambling, pickpocketing, stealing, cheating as a norm. Also, Shakespeare's audience would associate Ephesus with witches and demons. This serves the comedy well, because the mistaken identity becomes a fear that one is being bewitched or the victim of some demon.

  PH: When we looked at the script I kept saying to the actors, "I think where possible, unless we have very good reason, we should take everything that people say absolutely literally." So when Dromio of Syracuse is talking about this place which is full of witches-- "witches do inhabit here"--the characters absolutely have to believe that. So in a sense, even though we possibly could have pushed that further, again it's a bit like the law and order question, for me it has to be tangible, it has to be something credible. So the visual world we created had to be a world where you can believe that people buy into the supernatural, and that it is not strange. We talked about when Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse arrive, they have obviously been told in their country that this is a dangerous, magical, strange place, and like everything in the play I think it's very important to commit to that.

  Antipholus of Syracuse describes himself at the beginning of the play as "like a drop of water / That in the ocean seeks another drop." Did your production seek to resolve this sense of isolation in the familial reconciliation at the end of the play?

  TS: For us the reconciliation was a rich, long, and detailed wordless event that was played out freely by the actors each time. The events that have gone before are so extraordinary and the relationships so complex and fraught with uncertainty, we wanted to give it time and balance both the genuine wonder of finding each other with the fears or questions that remain. As they went into the house, invited by the Abbess, each character had to find their connection with others involved in their situation. The questions for us were multiple: How would it be for Egeon and the Abbess? How does Antipholus of Ephesus encounter his wife and the Courtesan at the same time? Even Angelo and the Executioner have had some role and their stories need to end too. So, yes, we certainly took the characters from isolation to a very public situation of reconciliation. But the fabric of that reconciliation was as rich and complex and far from a simple resolution. In fact so many things are not resolved. As so often with Shakespeare, another set of questions and possibilities is just beginning.

  NM: It was a challenge in the production to bring out the full comedy and still be able to express the deep seriousness in the play and the desperation underlying Antipholus' sense of isolation. For this reason I was keen to have two actors play the twins, rather than go with the current popularity of one actor playing both twins. This meant the family finding each other in the final scene could be played to the full. And it is a very moving moment indeed when brother finds brother, Dromio finds Dromio, wife finds husband, and parents find children. In fact the whole cast was so moved in that scene that genuine tears often flowed.

  PH: I think there's a certain moment, particularly in plays like this, where characters end up telling other characters things that we already know as an audience. Because of the way the plot works, you reach a point two thirds of the way through where things are being retold. Part of our challenge was to be as witty and inventive about how we retold that information, so the audience aren't going, "Yes we know that, we know that ..." Then you get to the final sequence where everyone comes on, and the audience of course already know what's happening, so in the last third of the play we really challenged ourselves. Wherever there was repetition of information we almost said to ourselves "Let's try and do each one of these things in a different style." So when the Courtesan recounts what's happened to her it became a very bluesy, box-office number with the whole company, and a puppet show played out when Adriana tells the duke what's happened. But when it came to that final moment of reconciliation, again I felt it was very important, even though it had been a mad, mad world, that there was genuine heart in all of these reconciliations: when the Abbess meets her husband, and the reunion of the twins. For me it was committing to that and building toward the final reconciliation, which I found very touching, when the two Dromios are left alone and everyone else has gone in to dinner. I suppose in one sense we tried to be very simple with that, but very honest about it, without trying to change the play into something else. What's there in the play is a story of reconciliation and people coming together again.

  SHAKESPEARE'S CAREER

  IN THE THEATER

  BEGINNINGS

  William Shakespeare was an extraordinarily intelligent man who was born and died in an ordinary market town in the English Midlands. He lived an uneventful life in an eventful age. Born in April 1564, he was the eldest son of John Shakespeare, a glove-maker who was prominent on the town council until he fell into financial difficulties. Young William was educated at the local grammar in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, where he gained a thorough grounding in the Latin language, the art of rhetoric, and classical poetry. He married Ann Hathaway and had three children (Susanna, then the twins Hamnet and Judith) before his twenty-first birthday: an exceptionally young age for the period. We do not know how he supported his family in the mid-1580s.

  Like many clever country boys, he moved to the city in order to make his way in the world. Like many creative people, he found a career in the entertainment business. Public playhouses and professional full-time acting companies reliant on the market for thei
r income were born in Shakespeare's childhood. When he arrived in London as a man, sometime in the late 1580s, a new phenomenon was in the making: the actor who is so successful that he becomes a "star." The word did not exist in its modern sense, but the pattern is recognizable: audiences went to the theater not so much to see a particular show as to witness the comedian Richard Tarlton or the dramatic actor Edward Alleyn.

  Shakespeare was an actor before he was a writer. It appears not to have been long before he realized that he was never going to grow into a great comedian like Tarlton or a great tragedian like Alleyn. Instead, he found a role within his company as the man who patched up old plays, breathing new life, new dramatic twists, into tired repertory pieces. He paid close attention to the work of the university-educated dramatists who were writing history plays and tragedies for the public stage in a style more ambitious, sweeping, and poetically grand than anything which had been seen before. But he may also have noted that what his friend and rival Ben Jonson would call "Marlowe's mighty line" sometimes faltered in the mode of comedy. Going to university, as Christopher Marlowe did, was all well and good for honing the arts of rhetorical elaboration and classical allusion, but it could lead to a loss of the common touch. To stay close to a large segment of the potential audience for public theater, it was necessary to write for clowns as well as kings and to intersperse the flights of poetry with the humor of the tavern, the privy, and the brothel: Shakespeare was the first to establish himself early in his career as an equal master of tragedy, comedy, and history. He realized that theater could be the medium to make the national past available to a wider audience than the elite who could afford to read large history books: his signature early works include not only the classical tragedy Titus Andronicus but also the sequence of English historical plays on the Wars of the Roses.