SOURCE: Garton, Charles, “Centaurs, the Sea, and The Comedy of Errors.” Arethusa 12, no. 2 (fall 1979): 233-54.

In the following essay, Garton suggests the significance of Shakespeare's use of Greek mythological sources in his naming and implicit characterization of the brothers Antipholus.

There exists a belief, which is as yet uncontroverted, or at least inadequately controverted, that when Shakespeare named his principals in The Comedy of Errors—the twin sons of the Merchant of Syracuse, the confusion of whose identities, pending their reunion, is the most overt theme of the play—the poet did not succeed in saying exactly what he meant or what he ought to have meant. That is to say, he muddled the twins' name in such a way that even when the Errors proper have been untangled, and even when the adventitious misspelling of the twins' name in the stage directions of Acts One and Two...