Source: "The Comedy of Errors as Problem Comedy," in Rocky Mountain Review of Language & Literature, Vol. 41, No.4, 1987, pp. 230-36.

[In this excerpt, Kehler notes that Adriana and her husband, Antipholus of Ephesus, "could pass far a well-to-do modern couple headed for divorce." She points out that part of the problem in their marriage is the "inevitable imbalance of love" between them, which is worsened by Adriana's powerlessness to change the Situation.]

. . . . The specific problem Shakespeare explores through the relationship of Adriana and E. Antipholus is both timeless and peculiarly modern: can love survive marriage? C. L. Barber notes [in "Shakespearean Comedy in The Comedy of Errors"] that, unlike Plautus, Shakespeare "frequently makes the errors reveal fundamental human nature, especially human nature under the stress and tug of marriage." Considering Shakespeare's depiction of a marriage "subjected to the very unromantic strains of temperament grinding on temperament in the...