The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare, William -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Half-title Page Series Title Page The Editor Dedication Contents General editors’ preface Preface and acknowledgements Introduction

Error and identity

The idea of error: ‘What error drives our eyes and ears amiss?’ Dim inwardness: ‘if that I am I’ Deceptive outwardness: ‘reverend reputation’ Metamorphosis: ‘Transform me’

The cultural world

Magic: ‘Dark-working sorcerers’ Language: ‘your words’ deceit’ Objects: ‘The chain, unfinished’ The marketplace and religion: ‘redemption – the money in his desk’ Time and marriage: ‘a time for all things’

Poetic geography, travel, Dark Ephesus Genre and style

Different generic hats Verbal shape-shifting Technicalities in scansion

Sources and influences

Plautus Italian cinquecento comedy Apollonius: Gower and Twine The Bible: Acts and Ephesians Tudor drama Allusions: Elizabethan urban writings

Staging

The ‘lock-out’ scene (3.1) To double actors or not Pacing

Early performances Afterlife: image, stage and screen

Image Stage: the Restoration and the nineteenth century Stage: four twentieth-century productions and an adaptation Stage: other modern productions and adaptations Screen

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

Scene 1.1 Scene 1.2 Scene 2.1 Scene 2.2 Scene 3.1 Scene 3.2 Scene 4.1 Scene 4.2 Scene 4.3 Scene 4.4 Scene 5.1

Longer notes Appendices

1 Date of composition

External evidence Internal evidence

2 The text and editorial procedures

The text

Editorial procedures

3 Casting and doubling

Doubling

Abbreviations and references

Abbreviations used in the notes, introduction and appendices Works by and partly by Shakespeare Editions of Shakespeare collated Other works cited