It's realllly funny! ( )

Not one of Shakespeare's best. Two pairs of twins were separated shortly after birth, one pair gentlemen and one pair servants. They are reunited after a series of confusing events and mistaken identity.

It wasn't a bad play, and would probably be funnier on stage, but it didn't seem enough of a plot for 5 whole acts. ( )

I went into this fairly skeptical of how much I would actually enjoy it. I was told that it was Shakespeare's first play and that the only reason that my instructor was having us read it was because it is actually being performed here on campus and we are required to attend the one-night-only performance. Not a glowing recommendation to have before starting a book!

The play is surprisingly easy to follow and understand. The humor is actually funny and I found myself chuckling out loud and enjoying the many puns and instances of word play that take place throughout caused by the many mistakes in identity that occur due to the presence of two sets of long separated twins. The play does require the reader/viewer to suspend reality in order for the premise to work, but all in all, it's quite entertaining and worth checking out if you're interested in this sort of thing. ( )

FFYAA

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1091936.ht...

I dimly remember the Rowan Atkinson sketch where he is a schoolmaster trying to beat respect for English literature into the heads of a host of invisible and improbably named schoolboys. One of the great lines is when he insists that there is only one joke in Shakespeare, and it is in A Comedy of Errors, when "Two people look like each other. Twice." Pause. "It's not that funny!"

Well, actually, it is that funny. It's a much shorter play than the histories I've read/listened to so far; it's a bit more original, in that Shakespeare has boiled together bits of Plautus (who was also pretty funny in his day) to produce a mock-classical, proto-pantomime slapstick piece.

Anyway, the play itself relies on the stable foundation of farce, where we the audience know what is going on but the characters don't; two visitors to Ephesus get mistaken for their long-lost twin brothers who are local residents, and hilarity ensues. The key to the mystery is held by their father, who appears only in the first scene and the last, to set the scene for us and then to help resolve matters. Shakespeare himself was the father of twins, born in 1585, though they were not identical, being a boy and a girl. Still, I imagine it gave him a certain inspiration as he wrote this play in the early to mid 1590s.

The key drama in the play is the story of the visiting Antipholus of Syracuse, who finds that though a complete stranger, Adriana, incomprehensibly claims him as her husband, he is much more attracted to her sister Luciana. (His twin, the local Antipholus of Ephesus, seems to be much more of a bastard; and their servants, the two Dromios, are basically clowns.) There are other bits of tension, mainly to do with arbitrary justice and summary execution, but that is the main plot. With the right people, it can work very well.

In the Arkangel version I've been listening to, David Tennant turns in yet another great performance as Antipholus of Syracuse, doing his English accent. The Ephesians are all Irish - Adriana and Luciana played by two of the Cusack sisters (Niamh and Sorcha), and a generally well-chosen run of accents populating the town - Pauline McLynn, for instance, is the Courtesan. Most gloriously, the sorcerous Dr Pinch is played with an Ulster accent, clearly intended to be reminiscent of Ian Paisley. It's almost worth listening to for his brief scenes alone.

Anyway, it's short but sweet, and reminds me that I'm listening to these plays not just because they are classics but because most of them are very good. ( )