SHAKESPEARE
Comedy of Errors:
Play introduction by Don Wooten - audio podcast - text (PDF)Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_of_Errors
Read the play online - http://shakespeare.mit.edu/comedy_errors/index.html
Last performed by the Genesius Guild in 2008 ~ Photos
Take two sets of twins, separated at childhood, add parents parted in a shipwreck at sea; fast forward fifteen years, and bring them all together, but very slowly and unwittingly. That's the plot outline for Shakespeare's “A Comedy of Errors.”
Even in his early slapstick farce, Shakespeare manages to endow these stock characters with a generous touch of humanity. When the skeleton of this plot was set a-dancing much earlier by the Roman playwright Plautus - and even earlier by the Greek author Menander - it drew laughs and applause. Shakespeare doubles the complications and the fun.