The Comedy of Errors

by Kent Cartwright

  1.1 The Folio playtext begins with Actus primus, Scena prima, although F’s Act 1 contains no subsequent scene divisions; the same is so for Acts 3, 4 and 5, while Act 2 lacks any scene designation. Theobald established the now-traditional scene ‘changes’; Capell added the numbers. The location is unspecified; Theobald envisioned a formal chamber of the Duke’s palace, as do most productions; Capell imagined a ‘public place’.

  1 Proceed ‘institute and carry on a legal action’ (OED v. 2c); or simply ‘continue’ (OED 4a); the scene opens in mid-conversation (cf. TGV 1.1.1).

  Solinus See List of Roles, 2n.

  procure ‘bring about, cause, effect’ (OED v. 4a); often used in a legal sense (see e.g. OED procurator n.1 7). The Duke both prosecutes and judges.

  1–2 fall … all Here and again at 26–7, 94–5 and 157–8, Egeon employs couplets. The first begins and the last ends the scene, but the middle two suggest premature closures, as if he did not want to continue.

  2 doom of death sentence of death; a phrase echoed widely elsewhere, e.g. Tit 3.1.24, H5 3.6.44. The concrete, monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon doom and death jolt against the more abstract, polysyllabic and Latinate Proceed and procure (1), the two lines referring differently to the same eventuality.

  woes i.e. my woes; repeated at 27; cf. 5.1.310 and n.

  3, 36 Syracusa common, if slightly archaic EM spelling. On Syracuse.

  4 partial inclined (OED adj. 5), with the secondary suggestion of appearing partial towards a party in a controversy (see OED 4a)

  infringe transgress, contravene

  5–10 ‘The hostility [between Ephesus and Syracuse] that recently arose from the spiteful violence of your duke (who, with his cruel laws, has executed fair-dealing merchants of our city because they could not pay his fines), rules out any pity that might make me reduce my sentence against you.’ This speech, along with 4, establishes the Duke’s internal conflict, for he will become progressively more sympathetic; see 142–54; 5.1.390. The plot device of inter-city war recurs in TS (see 4.2.81–5); see also TN 3.3.25–9. Gascoigne’s Supposes (1566) offered a possible model.

  1.1] (Actus primus, Scena prima.); ACT I. SCENE I. Rowe 0.1 Solinus] Collier 0.2 EGEON] Capell (Rowe subst.) Syracuse] Collier4; Siracusa F 1+ SP] Capell (Rowe subst.); Marchant., Mer., Merch. F 1 Solinus] Salinus F2 3+ SP] (Duke., Duk.) 3 Syracusa] Syracuse F4

  5 enmity and discord rhetorical synonymia, the same idea repeated in different words

  6 Sprang modernized from F’s ‘Sprung’. Shakespeare employs both past tense variants of ‘to spring’ (e.g. ‘sprang’st’, 3H6 5.7.31; ‘sprung’, 2H4 1.1.111).

  rancorous outrage ranc’rous; malicious and violent injury (OED rancorous adj. 3, first citation, applied to an action)

  duke ruler (OED n. 1a)

  8 wanting lacking

  guilders gold or silver coins current in the Netherlands and Germany; also a general term for money (again at 4.1.4), occurring only in CE. This is the first of many references to measures of economic value, including angel, bond, carat, ducat, mark, note, present money and rag (see Fischer, 170). One need not be overly precise about the worth of CE’s currencies.

  redeem ransom (OED v. 3; also at 4.4.84), initiating the play’s Christian resonances

  9 sealed … bloods ‘ratified his tyrannical laws with the forfeit of their lives’, with a play on ‘seal’ as ‘to place a seal upon (a document)’ (OED v.1 1a) and perhaps as ‘to decide irrevocably (the fate of a person or thing)’ (OED 1g; OED does not record this use before 1810, but cf. ‘seal’d up my expectation’, 2H4 4.5.103). Red sealing-wax was used on Elizabethan documents (Wells).

  rigorous rig’rous; harsh, cruel

  bloods blood

  10 Excludes exclude. In EM English, co-ordinated singular nouns, such as enmity and discord (5), are often viewed as one and given a singular verb ending, -s (Hope, 2.1.8a; Abbott, 333); cf. 87 and n., on Was; 1.2.76.

  11 intestine jars quarrels between the two cities; i.e. internal to the region (see OED intestine adj. 1); Shakespeare’s only other use of intestine refers to civil warfare (1H4 1.1.12). Ephesus and Syracuse are independent city-states, but intestine posits them as both within the Greek political sphere (Wells). Because Syracuse was ethnically Dorian and Ephesus Ionian, some tension between the two Greek strains may be implied. According to Herodotus, Dorians were given to wandering, while the Ionians were more settled (1.56)–like the play’s Syracusans and Ephesians.

  12 seditious ‘factious with tumult; turbulent’ (Johnson, Dictionary), a broader meaning than the modern one: engaged in inciting ‘revolt against constituted authority’ (OED adj. 1a). Together, intestine (11) and seditious imply some affinity between the two cities.

  6 Sprang] Oxf1; Sprung F

  13 synods councils or assemblies; typically used in a religious or ecclesiastical sense, e.g. ‘heavenly synod’ (AYL 3.2.150)

  14 *Syracusans modernized from F’s ‘Siracusians’ (here and subsequently). The -an form was used in the 16th and 17th centuries and takes the same metre as the -ian spelling (see OED adj. and n. Derivatives).

  15 to ‘allow no trade between our hostile towns’ (Ard2); perhaps ‘T’admit’

  adverse opposing, actively hostile (OED adj. 1a); ‘adverse town’ occurs in TN 5.1.84; cf. KJ 4.2.172.

  16 any anyone

  Ephesus.

  17 *at Syracusan for F’s ‘at any Siracusian’. To regularize the verse, Pope dropped ‘any’. The compositor may have inserted a gratuitous ‘any’ because of the visual attraction of the word in the lines before and after, the phenomenon of ‘eye-skip’.

  marts public marketplaces (OED n.3 1a); see 1.2.27n. The play mentions marts and mart 11 times; most of its action will occur in the main Ephesian mart.

  18 Again in return (Crystal & Crystal adv. 1) any Syracusan born anyone born in Syracuse

  20 confiscate confiscated (see OED adj. 1); here pronounced with the accent on the second syllable, though not so at 1.2.2

  dispose disposal (OED n. 3); cf. ‘undisposed’ at 1.2.80 (and see n.).

  21 a thousand marks The mark, a common 16th-century European coin, was worth two-thirds of a pound sterling in early modern England (OED n. 2a). ‘[O]ne thousand marks is a large sum’ (Fischer, 93). Cf. e.g. TS 5.2.34, 2H6 5.1.79. See also 1.2.81 and n., 4.1.21 and n.

  levied levièd; collected, as of a debt (OED levy v. 1b)

  22 quit remit (OED v. 4); cf. MV 4.1.381.

  *and ransom F reads ‘and to ransome’; F2 removed ‘to’ presumably as metrically disruptive. The F compositor might have inserted it to create a parallelism with To quit.

  23 substance possessions, wealth; secondarily, one’s being or essence (see OED n. 2, 1), implying an equivalence between a sum of money and a human life. In Shakespeare, substance often refers to a person’s embodied self; e.g. TGV 4.2.123, 1H6 2.3.38.

  14 Syracusans] Pope; Siracusians F 15 To admit] T’admit F2 17 at] Pope; at any F 17, 18, 28 Syracusan] Pope; Siracusian F 22 and] F2; and to F

  26 this this is

  27 woes See 2n., on woes.

  evening sun the first of the play’s many time markers (and perhaps an oblique reference to Egeon’s agedness; cf. weary sun, 1.2.7). As in classical drama, the action will occur during one day, with all the plot-lines converging at Egeon’s scheduled execution time, five o’clock. See 150–5; 1.2.26n., on five o’clock; and 5.1.118 and n., on dial … five. See also 100n., on five. On time.

  28 say … cause ‘briefly tell the reason’, quibbling on brief as ‘writing issued by legal authority’ (OED n. 1) and on cause as both motive (OED n. 2) and ‘matter before a court’ (OED 7, 8). The Duke invites Egeon to defend himself judicially (cf. 30; see OED cause n. 3), just as his Well, Syracusan prolongs the action and prepares for his sympathetic day’s reprieve.

  31–2 These two lines (employ
ing rhetorical adynaton, a stringing together of impossibilities) were compared by Theobald to the exordium of Aeneas’ speech to Dido: ‘Infandum, regina, iubes renovare dolorem’ (‘Beyond all words, O queen, is the grief thou bidst me revive’) (Aen., 2.3; infandus, meaning ‘monstrous’ or ‘unspeakable’, figures importantly in Aen.). See 94 and n., on came–… more. Both Egeon and Aeneas tell stories–of losing a wife, wandering over the seas and suffering shipwreck in a storm–to the ruler of the place where they have landed. On CE and Aen., see Baldwin, Small Latine, 2.485–7. Egeon’s sentiment was also quasi-proverbial: ‘The revealing of griefs is a renewing of sorrow’ (Tilley, R89).

  32 Than I ‘than for me’; EM English sometimes substituted ‘I’ for ‘me’ (Hope, 1.3.2a); cf. e.g. ‘no child but I’, AYL 1.2.17.

  griefs Cf. 2 and n., on woes.

  33 my end Elizabethans often used ‘mine’ instead of ‘my’ before a word beginning with a vowel, but practice was changing (CE employs both); my ‘carries emphasis’ (Hope, 1.3.2a); cf. 1.2.14.

  34 by nature either ‘by a natural event, by the course of providence’ (Hanmer) or ‘by natural affection’ (Malone), i.e. for his lost son. Hanmer’s notion of the providential squares with Fortune (105), misfortunes (119) and Egeon’s fatalism. Cf. 2.2.75, 107.

  26 this] this’ (Walker, Versification) 29 home,] Rowe subst.; home? F 34 nature] fortune Collier2 (Collier, Notes)

  36–139 Egeon’s exposition replaces the Prologue in Men. Directors uneasy about its length have often cut lines, employed mimes (e.g. National Theatre, 2012) or had the merchant illustrate the story with props. Nonetheless, the unaided speech stands up well. Shuffled objects and miming can distract from the section’s rhetorical values, Egeon’s descent into sorrow and the Duke’s growth in sympathy.

  37 happy … me ‘happy except in having me as a husband’. Egeon sees himself as dogged by misfortune; happy means ‘joyous’ (see 39), while its punning second sense, ‘fortunate’, prepares for hap in 38, dual meanings that CE explores; hap and its derivates function importantly in this scene (see 38, 113, 120, 138, 140, 141), suggesting an agency that is more than accidental. See also 1.2.40 and n., on unhappy; 5.1.60 and 284 and nn., on Haply.

  38 by me through me (Folg2). Egeon means either (1) happy except for the effect of my presence and my agency (making him the instrument of his wife’s unhappiness); or (2) happy in her life with me except for misfortune. Both read awkwardly.

  me, The line is one syllable short. F reads ‘me;’, the partial stop after me perhaps suggesting a dramatic pause (for a tonal change) that takes the place of a stressed syllable; F2’s ‘too’ after me was followed by editors for two centuries.

  hap fortune or luck, playing on happy (37); rhetorical polyptoton, the repetition of a word using the same root but a different stem (see also 84 and n., 130–1 and n.); on hap- words, see 37n.

  41 Epidamium with -ium monosyllabic. The name alludes to Epidamnus, the location of Plautus’ Men.. On F’s Epidamium instead of Pope’s influential emendation, ‘Epidamnum’, see LN.

  factor’s mercantile agent’s; cf. R3 3.7.134.

  42 care Egeon uses forms of care three more times in this scene (78, 84, 124) and cares at 5.1.310.

  at random ‘in a neglected or untended condition’ (OED random n. P2b)

  43 Drew me i.e. to Epidamium

  45 herself she; the reflexive pronoun could function as an emphatic personal pronoun (Blake, 3.2.2.3).

  at to the point of; at can ‘indicate a point reached’ (Blake, 5.4.2).

  38 me,] Cam; me; F; me too, F2; me,–Ard2; me happy, Oxf (Hills) 39 our] oür Keightley 41 Epidamium] Epidamnium / Rowe; Epidamnum / Pope; Epidamnus Oxf1 42 the … care … left] Theobald; he … care … left F; he … store … leaving F2

  46 pleasing punishment i.e. pregnancy, expressed as an oxymoron; child-bearing pains were considered women’s punishments inherited from Eve at the Fall: ‘In sorowe shalt thou bring forthe children’ (Genesis, 3.16).

  47 following foll’wing

  48 arrived arrivèd

  49 had … became The repetition of she with the reversed subject–verb order reflects rhetorical antimetabole.

  50 goodly handsome; echoed in pretty at 72; cf. fair at 5.1.343.

  52 As i.e. that they; sometimes used as a relative pronoun (Hope, 1.4.2)

  names which we never learn

  54 *meaner of inferior social class. F’s ‘mean’ is emended here to Delius’s unobtrusive meaner, regularizing the metre. The sense remains unchanged, since Shakespeare sometimes uses meaner non-comparatively as a synonym for mean, indicating lower class standing, as in TS 1.1.205.

  delivered deliverèd

  55 burden … alike The ‘meaner woman was delivered’ of the same burden, identical male twins, as was Egeon’s wife. F2’s punctuation, ‘burthen, Maletwins’, is preferred here over F’s ‘burthen Male, twins’ because male twins creates the sharper sense, while ‘burden male’ was not a familiar collocation (Oxf1). Associated with pain and birth, burden will return resonantly at 5.1.343 (see n., on at a burden), 402; cf. also 2.1.36. Cf. 107 and n., on burdened.

  57 The alliteration and rhyme of bought and brought add rhetorical artfulness. Other repetitions or echoes in 1.1 include meaner, meanly (54, 58); did, Did (66, 67); weepings, Weeping (70, 71); fastened, Fastened (79, 85); and Was carried, Was carried (87, 109); see 66–7n., 70–1n., 84n. For related examples, see 1.2.47–50 and n.; 4.4.30–40 and n.; 5.1.404, 406 and n.

  attend wait upon as servants

  58 not meanly not moderately, i.e. greatly (OED meanly adv.1 2); contrasted to meaner (54) for the rhetorical effect of antistasis

  59 motions suggestions, proposals (OED n. 13a); cf. TS 1.2.278, MW 1.1.54.

  54 meaner] Delius (Walker, Critical); meane F; poore meane F2; mean-born Oxf; mean young Oxf1 55 burden, male twins] F2 (burthen, Maletwins); burthen Male, twins F twins,] Capell; twins F

  60–1 *These two lines constitute one extra-metrical line in F. This edition, like most, follows Pope’s division, yielding a two-foot line at 61 that invites a pause to raise narrative suspense for Egeon’s long exposition of catastrophe (cf. 38 and n., on me,). Shakespeare may be imitating Virgil’s famous half-line (e.g. Aen., 2.66, 233), which some Renaissance commentators viewed as a poetic device to excite emotion. Short lines occur often and variously in Shakespeare; cf. e.g. 1.2.16. Alternatively here, some portion of the text may have been omitted in the typesetting process.

  60 too soon echoed at 1.2.2 (see n., on goods too soon)

  62–95, 98–120 The shipwreck story is inspired by the Apollonius of Tyre tradition and by biblical and romance narratives. The image of shipwreck engaged Shakespeare’s imagination, as in 3H6, a play rife with sea and shipwreck images (e.g. at 5.4.3–38), or in later plays such as MV, TN, Oth, Per, WT and Tem.

  62 A league about three miles; the term typically occurs ‘in poetic or rhetorical statements of distance’ (OED n.1); see also 100, and e.g. MND 1.1.159.

  63 wind-obeying a complex phrase in a rare pre-modifying position; cf. ‘cormorant devouring Time’ (LLL 1.1.4), ‘too hard-a-keeping oath’ (LLL 1.1.65) and ‘ne’er-yet-beaten horse’ (AC 3.1.33) (Hope, 1.2.9).

  deep i.e. deep sea (OED n. 3a)

  64 instance evidence; sign (OED n. 7) or omen, with tragic functioning as a transferred epithet (or hypallage): ‘evidence of tragic harm’, subtly elevating the tone

  66 obscured … heavens obscurèd … heav’ns

  66–7 did … Did Repetition of words in close proximity (rhetorical diacope) can express heightened emotion (see 57n.); cf. 2.2.125 and n. A chiasmic d-aliteration continues in doubtful and death (68).

  68 doubtful warrant dreadful proof (OED doubtful adj. 3; warrant n.1 5a)

  70–4 Lines 70 and 72 are parallel in grammar and in sense; after each comes a line of amplifying explanation (rheto
rical aetiologia) that builds suspense for the climactic change at 74 (Forced … delays).

  70–2 On the image of a soul crying in adversity, cf. 2.1.34–41.

  70–1 weepings … Weeping repetition for effect, rhetorically close to anadiplosis; see 57n.

  71 before beforehand. The homonymic before for slows the line.

  60–1] Pope; one line F 60 agreed. Alas!] F4 subst.; agreed, alas, F

  72 plainings utterances of grief (OED n.), perhaps as a tragic archaism; plainings contributes to the line’s three alliterating plosives; cf. the softer w alliterations in 68–71.

  73 for fashion i.e. in imitation of their mother; cf. AYL 3.2.255.

  74 delays postponements of the looming disaster

  75 And … 1was ‘and this is what happened’. The stock phrase heightens anticipation as it delays the narration; cf. R3 1.1.62 (Ard2).

  76 sought … boat i.e. sought to save themselves by taking to the ship’s small boat (cf. TN 1.2.9–11)

  77 sinking-ripe ready to sink, like water-laden ripe fruit (OED ripe adj. 1d). Gerund + ripe occurs similarly elsewhere in Shakespeare: as in ‘weeping-ripe’ in 3H6 1.4.172, LLL 5.2.274 (Ard2); cf. the proverb ‘Soon ripe, soon rotten’ (Dent, R133).

  78–82 The wife fastened her younger son and a slave twin to one end of a small unused mast, or ‘jury-mast’ (Oxf1); Egeon did the same at the other end with the remaining two children; cf. TN 1.2.14.

  78 careful See 42 and n., on care.

  latter-born i.e. second-born; the wife takes traditional maternal care for her younger child. Because Egeon later says that he kept his youngest boy (124), some editors have emended F’s latter to ‘elder’.

  81 bound the first occurrence of this narratively and metaphorically important word, used variously; see 1.1.133; 4.1.3, 33; 4.4.95, 128, 147; 5.1.127.2, 145, 291, 294, 305, 338, 339. Also associated with bond; see 4.1.13n.; 5.1.339n., on bond.