Farce and Satire in Shakespeares Comedy of Errors Essays

Farce and Satire in The Comedy of Errors      Ã‚  Ã‚   All is not as it seems in The Comedy of Errors.   Some have the notion that The Comedy of Errors is a classical and relatively un-Shakespearean play. The plot is, in fact, based largely on Plautus's Menaechmi, a light-hearted comedy in which twins are mistaken for each other. Shakespeare's addition of twin servants is borrowed from Amphitruo, another play by Plautus. Like its classical predecessors, The Comedy of Errors mixes farce and satire and (to a degree) presents us with stock characters.      Besides being based on classical models, is it really fair to call The Comedy of Errors a serious play?   I'm not sure it is. Three-quarters of the play is a fast-paced comedy based on mistaken identity and wordplay, and often descending to crude physical humor. The framing plot changes the total impression the play makes, mixing pathos, wonder, and joy with the hilarity. But it doesn't turn an essentially funny play into an essentially serious one. Still, there are serious elements in the play, and these may stay with us longer than the light ones. These serious elements are not limited to the framing plot, though they often depend on it. In fact, what is serious and thought-provoking in the play is often the source of laughter, too. Usually the laughter comes first, and then, if we're attentive, we'll notice that Shakespeare has given us something to think about. Let me offer some examples. First, the play treats with some seriousness issues related to marriage: jealousy, loyalty, love, misunderstanding, the need for patience, the "troubles of the marriage-bed," and the "joy" and "kind embracements" that can come with marriage (II.i.27; I.i.39, 43).    Second, the... ... to describe marriage. Adriana claims that marriage has made herself and her husband "one," "undividable incorporate": "For know, my love, as easy mayst thou fall/ A drop of water in the breaking gulf,/ And take unmingled thence that drop again,/ Without addition or diminishing,/ As take from me thyself and not me too" (II.ii.142, 122, 125-29). Shakespeare doesn't pretend that such a union is easily achieved. He is quite aware that to offer oneself to another is to risk oneself.    Works Cited * Fitch, Robert Elliot. Odyssey of the Self-Centered Self. New York: Harcourt, 1961. * Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. Ed. G. Blakemore Evans et al. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974. * Wilbur, Richard. Introduction. Tartuffe. By Jean Baptiste Poquelin de Moliere. Trans. Richard Wilbur. San Diego: Harvest-Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1963.