Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors and Plautus' Menaechmi and Amphitruo

On a contextual basis, the First Player’s speech from the Aeneid comes with Hamlet’s newly-hatched plan to showcase the guilt of

Shakespeare’s plays often start out with a narrator describing the scene and the events to come in the story. Unlike most novels, plays somewhat describe the plot in its opening, which can be seen here where the narrator says “our fellow citizens had not the faintest reason to apprehend the incidents that took place,” showing how the narrator is telling of future events. This allows the reader to connect to the characters by being able to follow them through the events that the reader now knows are coming. Another example is when a young boy is dying in a hospital while being surveyed by the main characters to test a possible cure: “Tarrou had been keeping watch and noting, stage by stage, the progress and remissions of the malady” (213). Like a play, Tarrou is watching “stage by stage” the progression of this child’s death; Camus is comparing the boy’s illness to the structure of a story, he is pointing out components within his own novel. His illness starts out slowly, and throughout his stay in the hospital his condition “progresses and remissions” like that of a plot that gains in action and resolution. A final example is when Cottard and Tarrou are at the performance of Orpheus within the novel: “Some rather jerky movements he indulged in gave our connoisseurs of stagecraft an impression of clever, if slightly overdone, effects, intended to bring out the emotion of the words he sang” (200). The actor playing Orpheus over performs his scene,

  The ploy of mistaken identity as a plot device in writing comedies dates back at least to the times of the Greeks and Romans in the writings of Menander and Plautus. Shakespeare borrowed the device they introduced and developed it into a fine art as a means of expressing theme as well as furthering comic relief in his works. Shakespeare's artistic development is clearly shown in the four comedies The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Twelfth Night, and Measure for Measure where he manages to take the germinal idea of mistaken identity and expand it to peaks its originators never fathomed.

Many, if not all, plays are written to evoke thoughts from people in the audience. Through their scripts, authors deliver messages about their opinions on various issues ranging from gender roles to class ranks. These messages are developed to provoke thoughts and questions from people who experience performances. In the play Rome Sweet Rome, the Q Brothers Collective use both new and old theatrical techniques to make parallels between the Roman and United States governments by addressing issues involving women’s roles in society, class rank, and homosexuality. The play uses methods both similar and different to other classic plays to deliver a message that is relatable to issues in today’s world. This message is enhanced through the use of acting styles, set design, costumes, music, and lighting.

The differences in styles of language truly brings alive the plays' various characters, from the lowliest drawer to the noblest knight. The playwright's audience would have been composed of a similarly diverse spectrum of society, from the groundlings at the foot of the stage, to the members of the court in attendance, and these disparate members of the audience might very well have come away from the plays with different interpretations of

    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.

One of the most argued cases in history is whether or not William Shakespeare was the one to write his own plays, or if he had someone else write them for him. There are numerous amounts of arguments agreeing that Shakespeare wrote his plays, and then there are numerous amounts disagreeing with his penmanship of “his” plays. According to some sources, Shakespeare was an impractical choice to write such famous works of art due to his lack of traveling, and his lack of education (Hechinge). These theories come into play when explaining that Shakespeare was, indeed, a fraud.

But then one must consider the very end of the Symposium: the Final Dialogue. The party is effectively over. The main event is finished. The dawn is just about to break, and the roosters are crowing. In effect, Socrates and his two listeners have just pulled an all-nighter, and as many college students can attest, there is nothing quite like the feeling of buzzed haziness that arises as the sun creeps up and the world springs to life. Yet the ineffable Socrates still has something to say: “that authors should be able to write both comedy and tragedy: the skillful tragic dramatist should also be a comic poet” (223D). Even as he says this, “Aristophanes fell asleep in the middle of the discussion…Agathon also drifted off.” So the Symposium ends, not on a grand oration or a rousing round of applause, but on a quiet comment to a barely awake audience. What then, is the connection between comedy/tragedy and “suddenness”?

To begin with, Shakespeare introduces a Prologue to the audience in Act One, Scene 1. Through the quote, “Chorus. Two households, both alike in dignity, / In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, / From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, / Where civil blood makes civil hands

Throughout the play, powerful, old, and wise words lead to the plot and theme of The Tragedy of Julius Caesar. A leader that wants power at no cost will hide bad intentions in beautiful words. Words must not be trusted completely, for they lead to

The Bard of Avon has in his tragedy Othello a true masterpiece, but not one without flaws. It contains blemishes, imperfections, and minor negative features which detract in lesser ways from the overall evaluation of the play.

Shakespeare uses humour, action and romance all in Act One and it is this variation that keeps the audience's attention. The play begins with a prologue that is written in the form of a sonnet. The Prologue gives a summary of the play but does not give away too much of the plot, in order to keep the suspense. Shakespeare tells of the great tragedy that will follow.

I attended the HCC Stafford Drama Department performance of “The Comedy of Errors” on Sunday, November 22nd, 2015. I did not know much about this particular Shakespearean play but was looking forward to a good comedy. When I walked into the theater I was surprised and intrigued to see that the play was set in a Moroccan bazaar, it heightened my curiosity as to what this play had in store for the evening.

“Since his [Aristophanes’] plays were often sharply critical of Athenian policies, his ability to make people laugh was essential to conveying his message. He was a practitioner of what we now call Old Comedy, an irreverent form that ridiculed and insulted prominent people and important institutions” (80).

In the ‘Frogs’ and ‘Wasps’ written by the “eminently best” comedian of the fifth century, Aristophanes, we see he utilized humour to exact the important message that Athens is corrupt, and on the verge of chaos. The Athenian audience would expect to be thrust into a world of humour in the City Dionysia, somewhere parallel to their own (e.g. the Athenian jury in the ‘Wasps’, and the failings of the government in ‘Frogs’). It is vital, then, that Aristophanes conveys his political and social views through slapstick, farce, and caricature to interest the audience. This is an important component in both plays as the audience is able to simultaneously accept his diplomatic views whilst being entertained. After all his main point for producing his plays were to produce something with a “little fable, with a moral”.