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Home , Dead Ringers (comedy), The Comedy of Errors

illuminations A Guide to the 2014 Plays

3 The of Errors Directed by Kent Gash

Luciana Adriana’s sister. Has caught the eye of Antipholus of Syracuse.

Luce Adriana’s servant.

Nell Antipholus of Ephesus’ kitchen maid. rodney gardiner (dromio of syracuse and ephesus ) Courtesan Notes by Otis Ramsey-Zöe Mistress of Antipholus of Ephesus. and Rob Weinert-Kendt Emilia Who’s Who The Abbess of a priory.

Syracusans Balthazar A merchant. Egeon A merchant who arrived in Ephesus after Angelo searching for his twin sons. A goldsmith and a friend of Antipholus of Ephesus. Antipholus of Syracuse Twin brother of Antipholus of Ephesus and First Merchant son of Egeon. He has been traveling the world A friend of Antipholus of Ephesus. in search of his long-lost brother and mother. Second Merchant Dromio of Syracuse Must get money Angelo owes him. Twin brother of Dromio of Ephesus and servant of Antipholus of Syracuse. Doctor Pinch A schoolmaster, doctor and aspiring exorcist. Ephesians

Duke Solinus The Story Ruler of Ephesus. He upholds the rule of law while employing compassion in its application. Years ago, the merchant Egeon was sailing with his wife, twin sons and twin servants when a ship- Antipholus of Ephesus wreck divided his family. He, along with twin Twin brother of Antipholus of Syracuse. A well- son and one servant, was rescued by a passing respected member of the community. ship; a separate ship saved his wife and the other twin son and servant. Egeon and his one son and Dromio of Ephesus servant settled in Syracuse. Twin brother of Dromio of Syracuse and servant Now an adult, Egeon’s son Antipholus of of Antipholus of Ephesus. Syracuse (hereafter Antipholus S.) sets out with his servant Dromio of Syracuse (hereafter Dromio S.) In this production, which is set Adriana to find their lost brothers. When they fail to return, during the Harlem Renaissance, Wife of Antipholus of Ephesus. Craves equality in Egeon begins to search for them, his other son Ephesus is Harlem and Syracuse her marriage. and servant and his wife. His search brings him to is Louisiana. Ephesus, a town traditionally hostile to Syracuse. Each town has decreed death to any citizen from

6 All That Comedy Can Bear arguing marriage the rival precinct. Egeon is discovered, and Duke Some pedants insist that The Comedy of Errors, Elizabethans generally adhered Solinus sentences him to death. Egeon accepts one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays and by line to views of Christian marriage his impending death as a means to end his grief count his shortest, is more accurately titled The and misery. Hearing this, Solinus extends a one- Errors, after the tradition of dropping the rubric as dictated by faith and articu- day stay of execution to allow Egeon to raise bail “tragedy” or “comedy” as we do from, say, The lated in St. Paul’s letter to the money to save himself. Tragedy of . But while no one needs Ephesians, which states that Antipholus S. and Dromio S. arrive in Ephesus such a category reminder for the tales of , on the same day as Egeon, and the master sends , or those doomed teens wives must be subject to his servant to put away some money for safe- from Verona, to sever “comedy” from “errors” is their husbands, who in turn keeping at their inn. Shortly, Dromio of Ephesus to separate text from context, sequences from shall be “head of the wife.” As (hereafter Dromio E.) runs into the visiting consequences, the from the . Antipholus. Thinking him his master, he urges Such a separation does violence, in fact, to the such, in Renaissance England, him to return home posthaste for dinner. ’s essence. For while it is the sheer volume a woman’s body and posses- Antipholus S. asks Dromio E. if the money is safe. of scarcely believable mistakes and coincidences sions became her husband’s Confused, he denies knowledge of any money, that tips it into the comedy column, the play’s and gets beaten for his pains. forward bounce is what keeps these mishaps property, which allowed him Waiting, as always, for her husband, from inflicting lasting harm and keeps the to beat her for disobedience. Antipholus of Ephesus (hereafter Antipholus E.), characters’ sins from becoming mortal. Accordingly, Antipholus E. sends Adriana and her sister Luciana discuss the plight of married women. Adriana’s servant, Dromio E., Threat of death his Dromio to buy a rope for interrupts and recounts his strange encounter Still, the first thing one notices about the play such purpose. with the man he thinks is his master. Adriana is that it begins and ends on the very brink of Adriana and Luciana dispute sets out to fetch her husband and encounters the mortality. The Syracusan Egeon will die unless visiting Antipholus and Dromio and brings them he can raise a ransom by sundown, and the the nature of marriage and home. When the local Antipholus and Dromio action climaxes with his dramatic, last-minute role of wives. Their dialogue arrive home, they find themselves locked out. rescue from execution. While it’s easy to trace reflects tension between Enraged, Antipholus E. goes to a Courtesan and Shakespeare’s sources for the play—a pair of promises her the gold chain he’d intended for mistaken-identity by Roman playwright romantic love, social obligation his wife. —the addition of a literal “deadline” is and expectations of married Antipholus S. courts Luciana, who rejects his an invention typical of the young playwright’s women. Luciana represents the advances because she believes he is her sister’s dramatic sense. From the outset, Shakespeare husband. Antipholus E. is arrested for refusing guessed that even the frothiest purrs along status quo, urging her sister to to pay for the gold chain that was mistakenly better with a frosty nip at its heels. observe patience and accede to delivered to his twin brother earlier that day. The Shakespeare’s other innovation is also the dominance. Adriana argues that Courtesan demands Antipholus S. give her the play’s boldest gambit: doubling the number of promised chain. Convinced the town is filled with separated twins for maximum comic confu- Luciana’s position stems from witchcraft (as is Ephesus’ reputation), he and sion, so that waiting on two estranged young naïveté and says experience will Dromio S. try to escape. They find sanctuary in a masters named Antipholus are two oblivious alter her thinking. nearby priory with the Abbess. servants named Dromio. Not only had none of Meanwhile, Adriana, Luciana and the Shakespeare’s antecedents tried this, it is hard In contrast, Adriana ques- Courtesan hire Dr. Pinch to cure Antipholus and to find a twin-based mistaken-identity tale since, tions why men should have Dromio E. of what they perceive as madness, from Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask to David greater freedom than women. and takes the pair away. But they Cronenberg’s film Dead Ringers, that has dared to escape and meet their household outside the “supersize” its fantastical premise in this way. Her revolutionary stance priory. Duke Solinus enters with Egeon on his This ambitious mistaken-identity pile-up against social, political and eco- way to be executed, and the Abbess appears with functions as the sort of all-or-nothing gamble nomic orders seem rooted in a Antipholus and Dromio S. The family reunion is that both raises the comic stakes and piques completed, which includes a revelation that our curiosity as to how it can possibly be pulled rejection of the powerlessness Egeon’s wife is the Abbess. Solinus pardons off, like an ice skater adding another triple axel created by those very systems. Egeon.—Otis Ramsey-Zöe in midair. And it constitutes the playwright’s —ORZ

7 The Comedy of Errors

stock characters

The figures in The Comedy of winking bargain with the audience: Suspend your of Adriana and her servants to look outside at the disbelief, and I’ll keep all the plates spinning. As men claiming to belong there. Errors derive from stock charac- Samuel Taylor Coleridge put it in Literary Remains: How exactly does Shakespeare get away with ters that originated in Roman “A comedy would scarcely allow even the two all these feints, suspensions and reversals of plain comedies and found their Antipholuses . . . but farce dares add the two common sense? By turning the very quadrupling Dromios. . . . In a word, commence in a of mistaken identities, which generates the play’s greatest expression in Italian postulate, which must be granted.” most glaring challenges, to his advantage. In commedia dell’arte. Based on Even so, The Comedy of Errors’ “postulate” is by giving each Antipholus his own clever, garrulous fixed social types, many evolved design not an easy one to swallow, and our indul- servant Dromio, Shakespeare is not only able to gence is required not only when the farce com- multiply the plot’s misunderstandings but to milk into the favorite characters of mences but throughout. For starters: Even allow- every drop of humorous commentary from them. European in the 17th and ing for the twins’ physical resemblance, what The presence of a comic foil, in turn, lends the 18th centuries. Here are some of exactly are the odds that they would be wearing cock-ups and confusions another explanation, the same clothes? Productions of The Comedy of apart from the suspicion of sorcery: the notion the most popular: Errors most often surmount this obstacle with that they’re a put-on or a practical joke. This the tenuous suggestion that Antipholus and possibility, and the comic dander it raises in Pantalone is a lecherous, Dromio of Syracuse, meaning to hide their city of those who imagine they’re the brunt of pranks, origin from hostile authorities, have donned the provides the play’s near-primal wellspring of miserly old Venetian merchant. prevailing fashion of their adopted town, the bet- crowd-pleasing fun: violence, the He is most often portrayed as ter to blend in. This leaves us to assume, however, undeniable backbeat of from rich and retired. Sometimes that the sartorial options for men and their ser- Aristophanes’ Philocleon to vants in Ephesus are as circumscribed as a private mock-strangling Bart. Consider that even before he is poor, sometimes a father, school dress code. any of the mistaking has begun, Antipholus other times a bachelor. (Egeon) And given that Antipholus of Syracuse is describes Dromio as “a trusty villain . . . that very ostensibly on a quest to find a long-lost twin oft / When I am dull with care and melancholy / brother, why does it never occur to him that the Lightens my humor with his merry jests.” Arlecchino, or Harlequin, was confusion about his identity might be related to And when, a few lines later, the wrong Dromio the most popular of the comic this self-same missing sibling? Compare his dim approaches and summons Antipholus home to a servants. He is at once witty, bewilderment to the response of , another wife he doesn’t know—and what’s worse, claims disguised twin separated from her counterpart not to have the money Antipholus just entrusted insolent, mocking, inept, - by a shipwreck, in . After just a few to the first Dromio—Antipholus first takes this ish and emphatically ribald. exchanges with a passionate pirate who swears talk to be “jests” and “foolishness.” His ire stirred, (The Dromios) he knows her as a young man named Sebastian, Antipholus delivers the first of many angry blows she guesses at the truth—that her long-lost that one master or another will inflict on the twin brother survived the wreck and is at large: wrong servant throughout the remaining action. The Inamorato and Inamorata “Prove true, imagination; O prove true, That I, went by many names and had dear brother, be now ta’en for you!” More than funny stuff Certainly, Antipholus and Dromio have the The play’s comic beatings are not merely diver- no recognizable traits other comparative disadvantage of bearing the same sions, but that’s one way they function—by than being in love. Typically, names as their twins, so that everyone they keeping those spinning plates aloft on gales of they are rational beings under meet not only seems to know them by appear- sheer reactive laughter. They also become a ance but to call them accurately by name. physical demonstration of the play’s escalating ordinary circumstances; how- How convenient it is for the story’s purposes stakes: When Antipholus of Ephesus is clapped ever, being in love thrusts them that neither of the paired twins happen to into custody as a madman on the reports of his into states of absurdity marked wander into each other’s sight until the denoue- wife, he breaks free and tortures his would-be ment. And the one time they come dangerously exorcist, the conjurer Dr. Pinch. by jealousy, fickleness, vanity, close to contact—when Antipholus and Dromio This offstage horror appropriately comes near selfishness, self-obsession and of Ephesus arrive at their house while their the play’s climax, which is fraught with all the Syracusan doubles are being entertained inside— violence a comedy can bear: Egeon’s execution the confusion is maintained by the simple refusal is imminent, the Syracusans have fully armed

8 jenny jenny graham

themselves against any oncoming attackers, and excessive passion. (Luciana and a desperate chase has led everyone to a mysteri- Antipholus of Syracuse) ously significant priory. This being Shakespeare, there is plenty of deft, even dizzying verbal sparring alongside the physi- Columbina is servant to the cal kind, but it’s not hard to notice that this light Inamorata and the beloved of comedy’s pace has been quickened, and its laugh- ter sharpened, by the shadow of the gallows and Harlequin. She is self-sufficient the tick of the clock. A mere recital of errors, or a and possesses a keen and active friction-free comedy romp, couldn’t possibly offer . (Luce and Nell) the same satisfaction. —Rob Weinert-Kendt Dottore (the doctor) presents

The Comedy of Errors (2008): Tasso Feldman (left) and John Tufts himself as a learned man who From Ephesus to Harlem played the twin Dromios. specializes in everything. At Kent Gash’s production of The Comedy of Errors World War I, some returning African-American his core, he is pompous and places the play in New York City during the soldiers resettled in cities in the North, West and fraudulent. According to Pierre Harlem Renaissance, a vibrant explosion of arts Midwest, hoping to find more tolerant communi- and literature by African Americans living in ties than those in the South. Louis Duchartre in The Italian Harlem in the early part of the 20th century. This Dating back to slavery times, many Southern Comedy, “There is no record in setting breathes new resonances into the issues African Americans saw the North as the land history of any case that Dottore represented in Shakespeare’s play. The efforts of of freedom. Its nickname, “The Promised Land,” the Syracusans to reunite with family members aligned with the view of the exodus in biblical has ever cured.” (Doctor Pinch) separated during a journey across the sea take terms as a fulfillment of God’s promise to on nuanced significance in this context, since deliver Jewish people out of bondage in Egypt. La Ruffiana is often represented African-American cultural memory engages with The Great Migration included both the dream of two major odysseys—the Middle Passage (1501– the promised land and the failure of that dream. as an older woman who is 1866) and the Great Migration (1910–1970)—that In his autobiography Black Boy, author Richard either a current or former evoke such occurrences. Wright, the grandson of slaves and the son of prostitute, a mother or a village Similarly, there is an increased poignancy in Mississippi sharecroppers, conveys the sense of the lack of family knowledge by the Ephesian hope associated with the North. “The North sym- gossip. On occasion, she has Antipholus and Dromio; splitting up families and bolized to me all that I had not felt or seen; it had been called a witch. (Courtesan) stripping away self-knowledge were hallmarks no relation to what actually existed. Yet by imag- —ORZ of slavery. To remedy the absences in their lives, ining a place where everything is possible, it kept the Syracusans set out to find their missing hope alive inside of me.” relations. Likewise, African Americans traveling Such articulations of the tension between north as part of the Great Migration sought to hope and despair pervade the art, literature reclaim what they had lost—primarily freedom and music of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston and opportunity. While the confluence of African- Hughes’ famed 1951 poem “Harlem” expresses American progress and creative expression these themes as the tension between the dream fomented the Harlem Renaissance, the Great and its deferral or between aspiration and Migration produced the metropolitan dynamism limitation. The poem asks, “What happens to a that undergirded it. dream deferred? / Does it dry up / like a raisin in After the end of the Civil War, African the sun? [ . . . ] Maybe it just sags / like a heavy Americans in the South fled farms and plan- load. / Or does it explode?” tations in search of a better life in northern According to scholar and writer Henry Louis industrial cities. They were driven by the lure of Gates Jr. in Life Upon These Shores: Looking at millions of new manufacturing jobs for unskilled African American History 1513–2008, between 1910 workers in the Northeast and Midwest. After and 1930, the black population in Central Harlem

9 The Comedy of Errors

double trouble

William Shakespeare’s own skyrocketed from 17,995 to 147,141. Among the elite, called the Talented Tenth. Prominent artists twins, Hamnet and Judith, may city’s newcomers were black artists who of this period include writer Zora Neale Hurston, produced the social, intellectual, and artistic poet Langston Hughes, poet Countee Cullen and be why he included twins as landscape of the Harlem Renaissance. Jazz sculptor Augusta Savage. major plot elements in The musicians came from New Orleans, blues players African-American artists dominated the last Comedy of Errors and Twelfth from the Delta. Writers, artists, musicians, phase, from mid-1926 through the Harlem Riot of photographers, poets and scholars all made March 1935. This final stage was marked by rebel- Night. Or it might be because their way to Harlem; among them were Louis lion against the civil rights establishment and twins are as reliable a plot- Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Romare white sponsors by many of the very artists these propelling pair as star-crossed Bearden, James Weldon Johnson, Marcus Garvey sponsors had promoted. and Paul Robeson. In “The Negro Artists and the Racial lovers or mortal enemies. Here Alain Locke, Howard University professor of Mountain,” published in The Nation in June 1926, are some highlights of the form. philosophy and “dean” of the Renaissance itself, Langston Hughes encouraged black artists to • Menaechmi by Plautus. This contextualized the era in his seminal 1925 anthol- free themselves from the artificial standards set ogy, The New Negro. The Harlem Renaissance by whites and civil rights leaders. Hughes spoke tale of identical twin broth- period is known as the New Negro Movement. against the prevailing trend “to pour racial ers sowing mass confusion In his foreward to the anthology, Locke identifies individuality into the mold of American standard- is assumed to be based on a some of the characteristics of the Renaissance: ization, and to be as little Negro and as much “Negro life is not only establishing new contacts American as possible.” Instead, he called for black Greek predecessor. and founding new centers, it is finding a new artists to honor the complexities of black life in • The Venetian Twins by Carlo soul. . . . We have, as the heralding sign, an unusu- their work “without fear or shame.” Goldoni (1747). Brothers separat- al outburst of creative expression. There is a Hughes’ skepticism of the idea that recogni- renewed race-spirit that consciously and proudly tion in art would lead to social change and his ed at birth, one stupid and one sets itself apart.” advocacy of freedom of expression illustrate smart, converge on Verona. growing tensions concerning the movement’s • The Man in the Iron Mask by Creating positive images ideas and expectations. While a number of The original architects of the Harlem Renaissance, factors account for the end of the Renaissance, Alexandre Dumas (1850). Based including Locke and others, envisioned a move- the Harlem Riot—a bloody confrontation over on the legend that the unlov- ment that would counter negative images of the alleged beating of a 16-year-old black youth— able Louis XIV had a banished— black inferiority with more “truthful” represen- marked a clear shift in priorities for civil rights tations and evidence of serious black cultural leaders from the arts to social and economic and nicer—twin brother locked accomplishment. For W. E. B. Du Bois, a leader problems. Despite its abrupt close, the Harlem away in the Bastille. in social justice and one of the founders of the Renaissance had a lasting impact at reframing • Twins (1988). This comedy cast National Association for the Advancement of expectations of African-American achievement Colored People (NAACP), African-American artistic in the arts.—Otis Ramsey-Zoë and achievements would impact social conditions. Danny DeVito as grown men In his 1926 essay “Criteria of Negro Art,” Du Bois Further Reading who can’t believe they’re long- argues, “until the art of black folk compels recog- nition, they will not be rated as human.” • Alain Locke. The New Negro: An Interpretation. separated twins. Altogether, the Harlem Renaissance evolved This 1926 anthology offers a resonant portrait • Dead Ringers (1998). Director through three stages. The first phase, ending in of African-American art during the Harlem David Cronenberg’s creepy 1923 with the publication of Jean Toomer’s novel Renaissance. Cane, was deeply influenced by white artists and thriller about twin gynecolo- writers—bohemians and Revolutionaries—fas- • Robert S. Miola. The Comedy of Errors: Critical gists who use their resemblance cinated with the life of black people. The second Essays. The usual grab bag of academic theory to seduce women in tandem. phase, from early 1924 to mid-1926, was presided and close reading, literary and performance over by the civil rights establishment of the history and criticism. —RWK National Urban League and the NAACP, a period of interracial collaborations between charitable white businesspeople and the African-American

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