The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare's earliest and shortest plays. Its theme is one of shipwreck and mistaken identity - a device frequently employed by Shakespeare not only in his comedies but also in his romantic plays such as Pericles and The Tempest.

Long-separated identical twin brothers with identical twin slaves, each of whom bears the same name as his twin, make for a lively comedy which was as immensely popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as it is today.

The text of this edition is taken from the Cambridge University Press New Shakespeare, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson.

BASED ON PLAUTUS"S Menaecbmi, The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare"s earliest as well as his shortest play. It was first per formed in Gray"s Inn in 1593 or 1594, though it was written earlier,possibly in 1590. It was published in the First Folio of 1623.

The theme of the play is one of shipwreck and mistaken, or unrecognized, identity - a device which Shakespeare employs frequently from The Comedy of Errors through Twelfth Night to Pertdes and The Tempest. But in this play the device is used almost entirely for comic and sometimes farcical effect. Antiphohis of Syracuse arrives in Ephesus unaware that the city holds his twin brother, also named Antipholus. To complicate matters further the two brothers are served by twin slaves, both named Dromio.The whole purpose of the plot is thus to create scenes of mistaken identity - handled dexterously and with a mature sense of comic timing - before the confusions are finally resolved in an ending which reunites the brothers and frees their father Egeon from sentence of death.

This early comedy was immensely successful in the Elizabethan theatre. It was still popular enough in 1604 to be called for performance at the court of James I, and it probably remained in the repertoire of the King"s Players for many years after that.