Shakespeares Comedy of Errors and Plautus Menaechmi and Amphitruo Ess

Shakespeares comedy of Errors and Plautus Menaechmi and Amphitruo One of Shakespeares earliest plays (its initiative recorded performance in December 1594), The Comedy of Errors has much been laid-off as pure farce, unrepresentative of the playwrights later efforts. While Errors may actu altogethery well contain farcical elements, it is a complex, layered work that draws upon and reinterprets Plautine comedy. Shakespeare combines aspects of these Latin plays with biblical source material, chiefly the Acts of the Apostles and the Pauline Epistle to the Ephesians. While Menaechmi is the most frequently cited clean source for Errors, Plautus Amphitruo is just as relevant an influence Shakespeares intervention of identity and its fragility is derived from this latter work. Of course, there are many early(a) structural and thematic resonances between the three texts each of the plays, to varying degrees, masses with the issues of identity, violence and slavery, while displayi ng a keen awareness of aspects of performativity, specifically the excogitation of the playwright, and the role of the audience. The structural similarities between Comedy of Errors and Plautus Menaechmi and Amphitruo are quite clear. In addition to adopting the traditional five-act structure, Shakespeare creates act divisions which comply with the Evanthian and Donatian definitions of comic structure (prologue, epitasis, protasis, catastrophe), and draws upon the classical stock of characters the senex, servus, parasitus, matrona and meretrix. Of course, this does not mean that Shakespeare is a slavish imitator of all things Plautine. While both of the Roman source plays for Errors begin with a ball prologue, set apart from the first act, Errors instead laun... ...s.) Plautus Five of his Plays, capital of the United Kingdom Arthur L. Humphreys, 1914. Crewe, Jonathan V. God or The Good Physician The Rational Playwright in The Comedy of Errors, in Genre, XV (1/2), 1982, pp. 203-22 3. Dorsch, T.S (ed.) The Comedy of Errors, Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1988. Hall, Jonathan Anxious Pleasures Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State, London Associated University Presses, 1995 Hunt, Maurice Slavery, English Servitude, and The Comedy of Errors, in English Literary Renaissance, 27(1) 31-55, winter 1997. Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare and Clasical Comedy The Influence of Plautus and Terence, Oxford Clarendon Press, 1994. Riehle, Wolfgang Shakespeare, Plautus and the Humanist Tradition, Cambridge D.S Brewer, 1990. Segal, Erich (trans.) Plautus lead Comedies, New York and London Harper and Row, 1969.