The Comedy of Errors, is of course, a comedy, and was possibly written as early as 1591 and is on record as being performed in 1594 in London. It is the shortest of Shakespeare’s works with just eighteen hundred lines. The playwright adapted the play from a work by the ancient Roman playwright Plautus called Menaechmi. The play is set in Syracuse, Sicily when it was part of the Roman Empire.
The play’s action revolves around the unlikely scenario of two sets of identical twins that are separated as infants and are reunited years later in the city of Ephesus. Most of the play’s plot is taken up with the hilarity that ensues from the twins being mistaken for each other.
This annotated edition includes a biography and critical essay.