Family and Marriage in Shakespeares Comedy of Errors :: Shakespeare Comedy of Errors Essays

Comedy of Errors - Family and Marriage Shakespeares Comedy of Errors is a swashbuckler romp of mistakes and misadventures, wrapping together two Plautine comedies sauced with Scripture and Renaissance poetry. soon enough the tangled web of estranged family that Shakespeare weaves holds significant differences from any(prenominal) of his originals, pointing to ideas about family and conjugation that Shakespeare no doubt held, and was to develop further in later works. Plautus Menaechmi yields a basic framework for Shakespeares p handle two long-separated br another(prenominal)s mistaken for nonpareil another. still Plautus two brothers differ markedly in attitude one is "gay, generous, and fun-loving," the other "shrewd, calculating, and cynical" (Kinko, p. 10). Shakespeares Antipholi seem as split as their Menaechmi relations, but lots interchangeable in general temperament. Plautus Amphitryon provides the idea of doubling servants as head as masters, but these are duplicates by divine action one set are disguised gods fully aware of the situation, the other confused mortals. So why the device of like-behaving mortal twins? Perhaps it is in the family members Shakespeare adds -- Egeon, Aemilia, Luciana -- that we discover the motives for his adaptations. One of the main themes of Shakespearean comedy is that of the innovative association thus the stereotypical round of marriages that is a given for almost any comic Act V. Here we have only one new marriage, between (Syracusan) Antipholus Erotes and Luciana, the restoration of happiness to (Ephesian) Antipholus Sereptus and formerly shrewish Adriana, and the renewal of Egeon and Aemilias long-sundered espouse bonds (taken and developed from Gowers Confessio Amantis). But the characters begin the play almost wholly sundered from residential area Egeon has long lost both wife and half his progeny, and abandoned his know son for a seven years search Antipholus Erotes seems bli thely unaware of his fathers front man in town, so complete is their separation even Antipholus Sereptus is estranged from his wife Adriana, not enjoying the fruitful state of marriage that must be the lot of comic characters. They are all awash in a capitalist society of business and bonds, with little room for generosity but much for the Officer, debtors prison, and harsh laws against Syracusan foreigners that even the Duke cannot overturn. Here St. Paul enters the fray, with the prescriptions of his Epistle to the Ephesians () "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.