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The Comedy of Errors is generally assumed to be one of Shakespeare’s early plays, perhaps even his very first. Its emphasis on slapstick comedy over the verbal humor of his later comedies has led many critics to term it an “apprentice comedy.” The exact date of composition is unknown, though it was first performed on December 28, 1594, at the Gray’s Inn Christmas Revels, to an audience that would have been largely composed of lawyers and law students. Attempts have been made to date it by references to historical events mentioned in the text (notably, in act 3, scene 2, when Dromio describes the fearsome Nell/Luce with references to European politics and geography), but the references are so vague that any exact dating amounts to guesswork.
As with many of his plays, Shakespeare drew on classical sources for the plot of The Comedy of Errors. The bare bones of the story are drawn from the Roman comedy Menaechmi, written by the ancient dramatist Plautus (c. 254–184 BCE). Shakespeare might have read the play either in the original Latin, or else in an English translation that was published in 1594, but which may have circulated in manuscript form before that year. In any case, the English playwright made several changes to the original story, including the addition of a second set of identical twins (the Dromios), the expansion of Adriana’s character, the creation of her sister Luciana, and, finally, the creation of the backstory involving Egeon and Emilia.
The play draws on a few other sources. The lock-out scene, where Antipholus of Ephesus is locked out of his home for dinner, resembles a scene in another Plautine work, Amphitruo, in which a master is kept out of his own house while the God Jupiter impersonates him. The general tone of The Comedy of Errors is drawn from Italian comedy of the period, the shrewish wife is a characteristic figure in English comedy, and several of the ideas about marriage are drawn from early humanists like Erasmus of Rotterdam. The play has always been very popular with audiences, if somewhat less so with critics, and in 1938, the plot was borrowed by Rodgers and Hart for their musical, The Boys from Syracuse.
