Asimov’s Guide To Shakespear. Volume 1

by Isaac Asimov

  she hath privately, twice or thrice a day,

  ever since the death of Hermione,

  visited that removed house.

  —Act V, scene ii, lines 113-15

  Of course, the statue turns out to be the living Hermione after all. Why she has been kept from the so repentant King for sixteen years and been condemned to a life of solitary imprisonment; why Paulina has undertaken the backbreaking task of feeding and caring for her and keeping the secret; why the King has not had curiosity to see the progress of the statue during all the "many years" in which it was being made-these points are not explained. All this lack of explanation lends substance to the theory that the last half of the fifth act is a new ending, patched on imperfectly.

  There is the final reconciliation scene and all ends in happiness. Paulina (who has now learned of her husband's death) marries Camillo, and even the Shepherd and the Clown now find themselves enriched, so that Au-tolycus, swearing to reform, is taken under their protection.

  7. The Comedy Of Errors

  The comedy of errors may possibly be the very first play Shakespeare wrote, perhaps even as early as 1589.

  It is a complete farce, and it is adapted from a play named Menaechmi, written by the Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus about 220 b.c. If we assume that the events in Plautus' play reflect the time in which it was written (although Plautus borrowed the plot from a still earlier Greek play) we can place the time a century and a half after that of Dionysius of Syracuse. It is for that reason I place this play immediately after The Winter's Tale.

  Plautus' play Menaechmi tells of the comic misadventures of twin brothers separated at birth. One searches for the other and when he reaches the town in which the second dwells, finds himself greeted by strangers who seem to know him. There are constant mistakes and cross-purposes, to the confusion of everyone on the stage and to the delight of everyone in the audience.

  Shakespeare makes the confusion all the more intense by giving the twin brothers each a servant, with the servants twins as well. The developments are all accident, all implausible, and-if well done-all funny.

  Merchant of Syracusa.. .

  The play begins seriously enough in Ephesus. Solinus, Duke of Ephesus, appears onstage, with Egeon, a merchant of Syracuse. The title "Duke of Ephesus" is as anachronistic as "Duke of Athens" (see page I-18) and with even less excuse, since there never was a Duchy of Ephesus in medieval times as there was, at least, a Duchy of Athens.

  There is hard feeling between Ephesus and Syracuse, to the point where natives of one are liable to execution if caught in the territory of the other. The Syracusan, Egeon, caught in Ephesian territory, stands in danger of this cruel law. The Duke says, obdurately:

  Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more;

  I am not partial to infringe our laws.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 3-4

  In the time of Plautus, the Greek city-states were as logically the scene of romantic comedy as were the Italian city-states in Shakespeare's own time. In both cases, the city-states were in decline but lingered in a golden afterglow.

  Syracuse was no longer as great as it had been under Dionysius. It lived rather in the shadow of the growing Roman power, with which it had allied itself in 270 b.c.

  In the course of the Second Punic War, fought in Plautus' middle age, Rome looked, for a while, as though it were going to lose, when the Carthaginian general Hannibal inflicted three spectacular defeats upon it between 218 and 216 b.c. Syracuse hastily switched to the Carthaginian side in order to be with the winner, but this proved to be a poor move.

  Rome retained sufficient strength to lay siege to Syracuse and, after more than two years of warfare, took and sacked it in 212 b.c. Syracuse lost its independence forever. Plautus may have written Menaechmi in the last decade of Syracusan independence, but even if he wrote after its fall, it is not hard to imagine him as seeing it still as the important city-state it had been for the past five centuries.

  For the other city, Plautus did not use Ephesus (as Shakespeare does) but he could have. Ephesus is a city on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor. Asia Minor fell under the control of various Macedonian generals after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c., but individual cities flourished and retained considerable powers of local self-government. Indeed, Ephesus, in Plautus' lifetime, was geographically part of the kingdom of Pergamum, which made up the western third of the peninsula of Asia Minor. The city was at the very peak of its wealth and its commercial prosperity.

  Of course, neither was in a position to carry on petty feuds with each other, and there is no historical basis for the opening situation in the play-but that is just to get the story moving.

  To Epidamnum.. .

  Duke Solinus points out that the penalty for being caught in Ephesian territory is a thousand marks. In default of payment of the fine, Egeon must be executed.

  Egeon seems to think death will be a relief and the curious Duke asks why. Egeon sighs and begins his tale. In Syracuse, he had married a woman he loved:

  With her I lived in joy, our wealth increased

  By prosperous voyages I often made

  To Epidamnum…

  —Act I, scene i, lines 38-41

  Epidamnum (or Epidamnus) was a Greek city-state on what is now the coast of Albania; on the site, indeed, of Durres, Albania's chief port.

  Epidamnum is, actually, the other city used by Plautus, in place of Shakespeare's Ephesus, and in a way it is more suitable. Epidamnum is three hundred miles northeast of Syracuse; Ephesus twice as far; and one might suppose that the nearer neighbors two cities are, the more likely they are to quarrel.

  Epidamnum became Roman in 229 b.c., so that Plautus was writing the play not long after the end of the city's independence.

  Why did Shakespeare switch from Epidamnum to Ephesus? Perhaps because Ephesus was far more familiar to Christians. Two centuries after Plautus' death it became one of the centers of the very early Christian church. One of the letters in the New Testament attributed to St. Paul is the Epistle to the Ephesians.

  Of Corinth…

  At one point, though, Egeon had had to make a long stay at Epidamnum, and after six months his wife followed him there, although she was nearly at the point of giving birth. In Epidamnum she was delivered of twin sons in an inn where a lowborn woman was also being delivered of twin sons. Egeon bought the lowborn twins as slaves for his own sons.

  They then made ready to return home, but were caught in a bad storm not far off Epidamnum. When the ship was deserted by its crew, Egeon's wife tied one child and one servant child to a small mast and Egeon tied the other child and the other servant child to another mast. For security, they tied themselves to masts as well and waited for the ship to be driven to land.

  What's more, rescue seemed close:

  The seas waxed calm, and we discovered

  Two ships from jar, making amain to us;

  Of Corinth that, of Epidaurus this.

  —Act I, scene i, lines 91-93

  Corinth was located on the narrow isthmus that connected the Peloponnesus to the rest of Greece. This favored position gave it a footing that placed it on the sea, looking east toward Asia Minor and also looking west toward Italy. Throughout Greece's history it remained one of its most important cities and one of its most prosperous parts. In Plautus' lifetime it was the wealthiest city in Greece. That prosperity was destroyed for a century when Roman forces, for inadequate reasons, sacked it in 146 b.c., a generation after Plautus' death.

  Epidaurus was a Greek city-state on the eastern shores of the Peloponnesus, only twenty-five miles from Corinth. It would spoil the effect of the story to have two ships come from such closely spaced cities.

  Fortunately, there is another Epidaurus (or, in this case, Epidaurum), which is located on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea, some 130 miles up the coast from Epidamnum. That gives us our picture. The wrecked ship, not far from Epidamnum, is being approached by a ship from Epidaurus, sailing from t
he north, and by another ship from Corinth, sailing from the south.

  Before the rescuers can reach the ship on which Egeon and his family are adrift, that ship hits a rock and is split in two. Egeon, with one son and servant child, is picked up by the ship from Epidaurus; his wife, with the other son and servant child, is picked up by the ship from Corinth. The two ships separate and the family is permanently split in two.

  … farthest Greece

  Egeon and his half of the family return to Syracuse, but the other half of the family has proceeded to some destination unknown to him and he never hears of them again.

  Egeon's son and his servant, once grown, want to try to find their twins. They leave on the search, and after they are gone for a period of time, Egeon sets out in his turn to find them:

  Five summers have 1 spent in farthest Greece,

  Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,

  And coasting homeward, came to Ephesus,

  —Act I, scene i, lines 132-34

  "Greece" had a broader meaning in ancient times than it has today, and "Asia" a narrower one. Greece (or "Hellas" as the Greeks, or Hellenes, themselves called it) was the collection of the thousand cities of Greek-speaking people, whether those cities were located on the Greek peninsula proper or elsewhere. From Massilia (the modern Marseilles) on the west, to Seleucia on the Tigris River on the east, all is "Greece." Egeon had thus been searching not just Greece proper but wherever the Greek tongue was spoken.

  As for Asia, this term was applied in Roman times (and in the New Testament, for instance) not to the entire Asian continent in the modern sense, but to the western half of Asia Minor only, the territory of the kingdom of Pergamum actually. Egeon, scouring Asia Minor, would naturally return to Syracuse by way of Ephesus, the largest city of the region.

  The Duke is affected by the sad story, but insists that it is either a thousand marks or death.

  … stay there, Dromio…

  Egeon and his listeners get off the stage and now the coincidences begin, for his son and servant, the very ones for whom he is searching, have just landed in Ephesus; while his wife and other son and servant, for whom the first son and servant are searching, have been in Ephesus all the time. The entire family is in the same city and no one guesses it till the very end of the play, although that is the obvious and only way of explaining the extraordinary things that are to happen.

  Indeed, everyone is extraordinarily obtuse, for the merchant who has brought the Syracusan son to Ephesus warns him:

  Therefore, give out you are of Epidamnum,

  Lest that your goods too soon be confiscate.

  This very day a Syracusian merchant

  Is apprehended for arrival here,

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 1-4

  Does the son ask who this Syracusian (a countryman, after all) might be? No, for if he does, the plot is ruined. The events can only follow if no character in the play ever sees the plainest point, and the audience must co-operate and accept the obtuseness for the sake of its own pleasure.

  The son has a supply of money with him which he orders his servant to deposit for safekeeping at the inn where they are to stay:

  Go bear it to the Centaur, where we host,

  And stay there, Dromio, till I come to thee;

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 9-10

  It is stated by Egeon, but not explained, that both servants bore the same name. This is necessary since even if the twins' faces were alike, the confusion could only be complete if their names were alike too. This identity in names passes the bounds of the credible, yet it must be accepted or else all must be given up.

  The servants are both named Dromio, which comes from a Greek word meaning "racecourse." It is appropriate, for all through the play each servant is sent racing, now on this errand, now on that, usually coming to grief, for they are forever meeting not their master but their master's twin, without realizing it.

  As for the masters, they are both named Antipholus, from Greek words meaning "opposed in balance." They are so alike, in other words, that if each were placed on the opposite end of a balance, the balance would remain unmoved.

  In order to identify them in the play, the masters have to be called "Antipholus of Syracuse" and "Antipholus of Ephesus." The servants are "Dromio of Syracuse" and "Dromio of Ephesus."

  It is Antipholus of Syracuse who sends Dromio of Syracuse to the Centaur.

  .. .as I am a Christian.. .

  Dromio of Syracuse runs off and Antipholus of Syracuse explains to the merchant that he is in search of his mother and twin brother. Suddenly Dromio of Ephesus races on the scene. His master, Antipholus of Ephesus, is a married man and dinner at home is waiting for him. Dromio of Ephesus sees Antipholus of Syracuse and begs him to come home.

  Antipholus of Syracuse naturally wants to know what home and what dinner Dromio is talking about and why he hasn't stayed at the Centaur and what happened to the money. Just as naturally, Dromio of Ephesus wants to know what money.

  Now here is Antipholus of Syracuse madly searching for a twin brother with a twin-brother servant, and here comes what seems to be his servant who obviously is talking about an utterly inappropriate set of events. Ought not Antipholus of Syracuse instantly suspect it as his servant's twin brother mistaking him for his own twin brother?

  Not at all. The thought never occurs to Antipholus of Syracuse (or to Dromio of Syracuse) for an instant, even though these cross-purposes multiply. (Antipholus of Ephesus and Dromio of Ephesus are more to be excused. They are not consciously looking for their twins and so they are mentally unprepared to consider the twins' existence as explanation for the errors.)

  As the cross-purposes continue (and they require each set of twins to wear identical costumes, if any further multiplication of implausibility is required), Antipholus of Syracuse cries out:

  Now, as I am a Christian, answer me,

  In what safe place you have bestowed my money;

  Or I shall break that merry sconce of yours

  —Act I, scene ii, lines 77-79

  Here, certainly, we depart from Plautus, in whose lifetime Christianity had not yet arisen. -And since Dromio of Ephesus can give no satisfaction, he is beaten.

  … war against her heir

  The cross-purposes continue and grow worse. Antipholus of Syracuse hastens to the Centaur, finds his money safe there, and calculates it was impossible to have seen Dromio when he had seen him. (Does he suspect? Not on your life!)

  In comes Dromio of Syracuse and Antipholus of Syracuse asks him if he has recovered his senses. Dromio of Syracuse naturally doesn't know what he is talking about and denies that he ever denied he had the gold. So he is beaten too. (The Dromios are constantly being beaten for no fault of their own.)

  In comes Adriana, the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, and the wife's sister, Luciana. They accost Antipholus of Syracuse and demand he come home to dinner with them. Antipholus of Syracuse is flabbergasted and suspects witchcraft (he suspects anything and everything but the obvious fact that his twin brother is involved), yet eventually accompanies the two women.

  Now, at last, Antipholus of Ephesus appears on the scene, ordering a necklace from a Merchant for his wife. He is further complaining that Dromio of Ephesus (who is with him) is telling some ridiculous story about himself denying that he is married.

  Antipholus of Ephesus invites the Merchant home for dinner and when they reach his house they find the doors barred. Voices within insist that Antipholus of Ephesus is an imposter, for the master of the house is within and at dinner. Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse even engage in conversation (with a closed door between) and suspect nothing.

  Antipholus of Ephesus, in high rage, thinking his wife is entertaining some lover, decides to take the necklace and give it to a courtesan rather than to his wife.

  Indoors, meanwhile, Antipholus of Syracuse is attracted to Luciana, the wife's sister, and she, embarrassed, urges him to be sweet and kind to his wife instead. When she l
eaves, Dromio of Syracuse enters and tells his master that a fat cook claims him as her husband.

  The two of them, Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse, begin a satirical (and to our modern ears, cruel) catalogue of the charms of the lady.

  Dromio of Syracuse says she is as spherical as a globe and that countries could be located on her. Antipholus of Syracuse begins to test this, in Shakespeare-contemporary manner, all thought of the supposedly Greek background forgotten. Thus he inquires about Ireland and America, though neither was known in Plautus' time.

  The answer to one of the questions offers a possible way of dating the play. Antipholus of Syracuse asks about the location of France on the cook's body and Dromio replies: 176 GREEK

  In her forehead, armed and reverted,

  making war against her heir.

  —Act III, scene ii, lines 126-27

  The reference must be to Henry IV, who in 1589 had become King of France on the death of his second cousin, Henry III. However, Henry IV was a Protestant and Catholic France (in particular, Catholic Paris) would not accept him. For several years France made "war against her heir."

  Henry IV won an important victory at Ivry in 1590 and then in 1593 abjured Protestantism and accepted Catholicism. Between his victory and his repentance, enough of the Catholic opposition was won over to end the war. Since Dromio of Syracuse makes it sound as though the revolt is continuing, one can suppose that The Comedy of Errors was written no later than 1593 and no earlier than 1589.