50 Fun Facts About The Comedy of Errors

Which record among Shakespeare's plays does The Comedy of Errors, a farce of mistaken twins, hold?

The shortest of all Shakespeare's plays, it is also among his earliest, with humour built on slapstick and puns.

For what offence is the old merchant from Syracuse sentenced to death as The Comedy of Errors opens?

Entering the city is itself the crime: Ephesus and Syracuse are feuding, and each has banned the other's merchants on pain of death.

Which rock frontman played both Dromio twins in the BBC's 1983 television version of The Comedy of Errors?

Roger Daltrey of The Who played both servants, with special effects putting the two Dromios on screen together for the final scene.

What do the bewildered Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse blame when strangers in Ephesus greet them by name?

Witchcraft is their only explanation, since Ephesus had a reputation for sorcery that Shakespeare's audience knew from the Bible.

The ancient Greek city of Ephesus, setting of The Comedy of Errors, lies in which modern country?

Turkey holds the ruins of Ephesus, a city once famous for its Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Which Ephesus figure is revealed in the final scene of The Comedy of Errors as the twins' long-lost mother?

The Abbess shelters the visiting twins in her priory, then stuns everyone by recognising the condemned merchant as her husband.

Which Roman playwright wrote the twin comedy that Shakespeare reworked as The Comedy of Errors?

Plautus was perhaps the most popular Roman dramatist in 16th-century Europe, and Shakespeare outdid him by adding a second pair of twins.

Which piece of jewellery ordered by Antipholus of Ephesus is delivered by mistake to his twin from Syracuse?

A gold chain was ordered as a present for Adriana, but the goldsmith gives it to the first man he meets with the right face.

Which later Shakespeare comedy also separates a pair of twins, Viola and Sebastian, in a shipwreck?

Twelfth Night returns to the idea with a brother and sister, so one twin spends the play disguised as a young man named Cesario.

What greets Antipholus of Ephesus when he brings a goldsmith and a merchant home to dine?

A locked door keeps him out because his wife is already at dinner indoors with his twin, whom she has mistaken for him.

What deadline does the Duke of Ephesus give the condemned merchant from Syracuse to raise his ransom?

The end of the day is all the Duke allows, so every muddle in the plot has to happen and be untangled within a few hours.

What does Adriana suspect about her husband, Antipholus of Ephesus, when he fails to come home for dinner?

He is unfaithful, she fears, and her suspicion seems confirmed when the wrong twin denies even having a wife.

Which sister of Adriana does Antipholus of Syracuse woo while everyone takes him for Adriana's husband?

Luciana takes him for her sister's husband, so his wooing alarms her and she begs him to show his wife more kindness.

How does Antipholus of Syracuse react when the wrong Dromio denies ever being given his money?

He beats him, the first of many blows the two servants take from masters who think they are being cheeky.

Why does an officer arrest Antipholus of Ephesus in the street at the goldsmith's request?

An unpaid debt is the charge, because the goldsmith insists he delivered the jewellery and its buyer swears he never received it.

What do Adriana and the Courtesan conclude is wrong with Antipholus of Ephesus after his baffling behaviour?

He has gone mad, they decide, once the Courtesan has watched his twin flatly deny a promise she knows he made.

Which conjuring schoolmaster does Adriana bring to treat her husband in The Comedy of Errors?

Doctor Pinch solemnly takes the furious husband's pulse, then commands Satan to come out of him.

What finally becomes of the condemned father of the Antipholus twins at the end of The Comedy of Errors?

He is pardoned by the Duke, who waves away the ransom that one of the reunited sons offers to pay.

How did the merchant father of the Antipholus twins acquire the newborn Dromio twins as servants?

He bought them from parents too poor to raise them, born in the same inn and the same hour as his own sons.

In the storm that split the family, what did the parents of the Antipholus twins tie themselves to?

A spare mast kept the parents and babies afloat, one group lashed to each end, until a rock split their makeshift raft in two.

At which Ephesus inn does Antipholus of Syracuse tell Dromio to leave their money for safekeeping?

The Centaur is where the money lies safe all along, though its owner first fears his servant has been cheated out of it.

What does the kitchen maid in Adriana's household claim about Dromio of Syracuse, to his horror?

He is her betrothed, she insists, having mistaken him for his twin, and he flees from a woman he has never met.

What is the name of the Ephesus goldsmith whose delivery to the wrong Antipholus ends in an arrest?

Angelo is under pressure himself, hounded by a merchant who is about to sail for Persia.

What does the furious Antipholus of Ephesus send Dromio to buy so he can punish his wife?

A rope's end is what he asks for, meaning a length of cord to use as a whip on his wife and her friends.

What does Adriana give Dromio of Syracuse after hearing that an officer has seized her husband?

A purse of ducats is meant as bail, only for the servant to deliver it to the wrong twin, who has no idea what it is for.

What does the Courtesan say she gave Antipholus of Ephesus over dinner and now wants returned?

Her ring, a diamond by her account, was given to him in return for a promised gift that never came.

How are Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus dealt with once the conjuring schoolmaster examines them?

Bound and carried off to a dark cellar, the pair later escape when the master gnaws through his cords.

How do the reunited Dromio twins agree to leave the stage in the closing lines of The Comedy of Errors?

Hand in hand, they decide, because twins who cannot tell which of them is older should not walk one before the other.

Which Syracuse merchant, father of the Antipholus twins, spends The Comedy of Errors under sentence of death?

Egeon, spelled Aegeon in some editions, appears only in the first and last scenes, framing the farce with the threat of execution.

What does Antipholus of Syracuse send Dromio to arrange so the two of them can flee Ephesus at once?

A ship's passage is duly booked, but the servant reports the good news to the wrong master, who is busy being arrested.

Which Roman comedy about long-separated identical twins did Shakespeare rework as The Comedy of Errors?

Menaechmi has no doomed father or long-lost mother; Shakespeare added both, along with a sister for the neglected wife.

At which London Inn of Court was The Comedy of Errors staged during rowdy Christmas revels in 1594?

Gray's Inn saw such disorder among its lawyers and guests that a mock trial was later held to arraign whoever was to blame.

Both early recorded performances of The Comedy of Errors fell on 28 December, which Christian feast?

Innocents' Day hosted the play in 1594 and again at court in 1604, a sign that it was treated as Christmas-season entertainment.

In which collection did The Comedy of Errors finally reach print, seven years after Shakespeare's death?

The First Folio of 1623 is the only early text of the play, so every later edition is based on it.

Which late Shakespeare play joins The Comedy of Errors as his only works to keep the classical unities?

The Tempest also unfolds in one place over a few hours, a neoclassical rule that Shakespeare otherwise ignored.

Which songwriting duo turned The Comedy of Errors into the 1938 Broadway musical The Boys from Syracuse?

Rodgers and Hart made it the first musical based on a Shakespeare play, working from a book by George Abbott.

Which 1988 film reworked The Comedy of Errors with Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin as mismatched twin sisters?

Big Business swaps the play's two pairs of brothers for sisters, one of each pair raised rich in the city and the other poor in the country.

Which 1982 Hindi film by Gulzar retells The Comedy of Errors with Sanjeev Kumar in a double role?

Angoor remade the 1963 Bengali film Bhranti Bilas, itself taken from Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar's 1869 Bengali retelling of Shakespeare's play.

Which musical style drives The Bomb-itty of Errors, a four-actor stage retelling of Shakespeare's twin farce?

Hip-hop carries the whole show, with a DJ on stage throughout while four actors play every role, male and female.

Which future Dame played Adriana in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1976 musical The Comedy of Errors?

Judi Dench starred in Trevor Nunn's production, which won the Olivier Award for Best New Musical after moving to the West End.

Which librettist of Mozart's Don Giovanni wrote Gli equivoci, a 1786 opera of The Comedy of Errors?

Lorenzo Da Ponte squeezed the plot into two acts for the composer Stephen Storace, and the opera opened in Vienna.

Syracuse, home city of the visiting Antipholus and Dromio, stands on which Mediterranean island?

Sicily's Syracuse was a great Greek city of the ancient world and the birthplace of the mathematician Archimedes.

Shakespeare, who filled The Comedy of Errors with twins, was himself the father of which twin pair?

Hamnet and Judith were baptised in 1585, some years before their father wrote his farce about two pairs of twins.

Which Roman comedy, in which gods impersonate a master and servant, may have inspired the twin Dromios?

Amphitryon, or Amphitruo in Latin, has Jupiter and Mercury take the shapes of a general and his slave so that Jupiter can sleep with the general's wife.

The Flying Karamazov Brothers, stars of a 1987 Lincoln Center Comedy of Errors, are a troupe known for what?

Juggling made the troupe's name after they began as street buskers in California, and their Shakespeare was broadcast live on PBS.

What is the name of the Duke of Ephesus who passes sentence on the father of the Antipholus twins?

Solinus is named just once in the dialogue, in the very first line of the play; after that he is simply the Duke.

What is the first name of the long-lost wife whom the merchant from Syracuse finally recognises in Ephesus?

Emilia invites everyone to a feast once the family is reunited, likening her decades of waiting to one long labour finally over.

To what does Dromio of Syracuse compare the enormous kitchen maid of Adriana's household when describing her?

A globe, he says, because she is spherical, and he goes on to joke about where Ireland, Spain and America lie on her body.

What do the escaped Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus do to the schoolmaster who treated them?

They set his beard alight with burning brands, a messenger reports, then put out the flames with pails of mud.

The classical unities that The Comedy of Errors obeys were long credited to which ancient Greek philosopher?

Aristotle's name stuck to the three rules from the start, though they were really devised by Italian critics of the Renaissance.