Play· 1594· Satire / Farce

The Comedy of Errors

by William Shakespeare

The Comedy of Errors: it draws on 1 recorded source.

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What influenced The Comedy of Errors

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Menaechmi

Play · -200

AdaptationHIGH

Shakespeare's play adapts Plautus's Menaechmi, the comedy of twin brothers mistaken for each other in a strange city, and doubles it with a second pair of twin servants taken from Plautus's Amphitruo.

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About the work

The Comedy of Errors

Two pairs of identical twins, a merchant's sons and their servants, were separated in a shipwreck as infants. When Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio arrive in Ephesus, where their lost brothers live, a day of mistaken identities follows: wrong wives, wrong debts and wrong beatings, until the family is reunited. Shakespeare's adaptation of Plautus's Menaechmi.

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