SOURCE: Bevington, David. “The Comedy of Errors in the Context of the Late 1580s and Early 1590s.” In “The Comedy of Errors”: Critical Essays, edited by Robert S. Miola, pp. 335-53. New York: Garland Publishing, 1997.

In the following essay, Bevington surveys Shakespeare's “creative reconfiguration of classical sources” in The Comedy of Errors with regard to late-sixteenth-century London theater.

The Comedy of Errors is often seen as a work of Shakespeare's “apprenticeship.”¹ To what extent is it also a play whose dramaturgy can be understood in the theatrical context of its time? One approach does not preclude the other, of course, but the second does focus attention on Shakespeare's apprenticeship in the theater as distinguished from non-theatrical influences upon him—his reading, the rhetorical bent of what must have been his education, his Warwickshire background, his social class, his observations of London life, and other factors that might be...