The Comedy of Errors

Two sets of identical twins, split apart in a shipwreck years earlier, wash up in the same city on the same day, and neither pair knows the others are alive. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant Dromio arrive in Ephesus hunting for their lost brothers, only to be greeted as familiar faces by wives, creditors, and merchants who take them for their twins. The muddle grows into accusations of madness, theft, and infidelity before the family is finally reunited. One of Shakespeare’s earliest and shortest plays, it lifts its farce from Roman comedy while adding a tender frame about a father under sentence of death. Fast, physical, and genuinely funny, it still plays beautifully on stage. Read it free as a PDF or EPUB.