SOURCE: “Shakespeare and Plautus: Two Twin Comedies,” in The Classical Tradition in Operation, University of Toronto Press, 1994, pp. 32-60.

In the following essay, Rudd compares the plot structure, characterization, and farcical elements of Plautus’ Menaechmi to The Comedy of Errors.

In comparing the two plays I shall quickly outline the Menaechmi, noting certain features.¹ Then, going on to The Comedy of Errors, I shall describe how, while retaining important Plautine elements, Shakespeare wove the Latin farce into the framework of a Hellenistic romance, and how in doing so he developed both genres into something richer and more complex, something which reflected contemporary ideas on love and on Christian marriage.

The background of the Menaechmi is supplied in the ingratiatingly jokey prologue.² A father from Syracuse takes one twin to Tarentum and leaves the other at home. At Tarentum, the boy Menaechmus gets lost in the crowd and is...