The Comedy of Errors Major Characters

The Dromios

Dromio of Syracuse and Dromio of Ephesus are not terribly complex in their thoughts or speeches, but they play a very special role in the play nevertheless. The Dromios are as deeply entangled in the identity confusion as their masters, the Antipholi. Unlike their masters, however, they experience and reflect on the madness they experience with a lighter, more jovial touch. For example, E. Dromio delights in the mischief of being locked out of dinner, and encourages E. Antipholus to break down the door. Much like his twin in humor, S. Dromio makes gleefully naughty jokes at the appearance of the Courtesan, which is decidedly less serious than S. Antipholus’s fearful condemnation of her as a manifestation of the Devil.

The Dromios’ performance has the power to highlight the absurd and delightful aspects of the play. In so doing, they provide comic relief for their masters’ stern severity. The Dromios are basically the comic anchors of the play. They seem to unquestioningly submit to the abuse they receive from their masters but they aren’t above complaining about it in amusing ways. In fact, the Dromios have a habit of playing with words and ideas so they can diffuse even the most tense of situations. Basically, the Dromios are in it to ride the wave, and the audience can take a cue from them and just relax and just enjoy the show, rather than figure out all the sensible details.

The Dromios must also be considered for the roles they play relative to each of their masters. For the most part, the relationship between each Dromio and his Antipholus is not that distinct. The Dromios definitely are servants to the Antipholi, but they are also constant companions, and, to some extent, we get the feeling that these guys are also partners in crime. Though S. Antipholus went out seeking a brother, through the duration of the play, it’s clear that the Antipholus-Dromio pairs operate like brothers. Sure, it’s not exactly a loving relationship, but it’s congenial and fraternal, where they hit each other because they love each other, obviously, not because one of them is adopted. It’s clear the Antipholi don’t have a brotherly relationship with each other, but that doesn’t mean they have no fraternal relationships at all. Though the Antipholi and the Dromios are separated by class distinction, the time they spend together, and the camaraderie they share, suggests that each Antipholi actually has a brotherly relationship with his respective Dromio. It’s an interesting entry point to think about the meaning of family, class, and even blood ties in the play.

A final note on the Dromios: the whole action of the play is pivoted around S. Antipholus’s search for his brother, so you’d think the conclusion of the play would celebrate S. Antipholus’s reunion with E. Antipholus. Instead, the Dromios are the ones playing the final notes of the whole affair, leaving the audience with a feeling of how the future will go. In the final scene, the Antipholi don’t seem terribly interested or excited about each other. In fact, they don’t even really exchange words. By contrast, the Dromios are shocked and amazed at their discovery of each other. Better still, they playfully talk about how they’ll go forward from here. They were brothers by birth, and they seem committed to being brothers for the rest of their lives. They choose to go side-by-side in a jolly and warm, but most importantly, an equal way. This might nod to the fact that they’ve finally found true brotherhood. While they definitely had semi-brotherly relationships with the Antipholi, they can now finally be involved in a relationship where they’re allowed to be equals in both social standing and affection.

Antipholus of Ephesus

Antipholus of Ephesus is twin brother to Antipholus of Syracuse, son to Egeon and Aemilia, and generally a man about the town in Ephesus. E. Antipholus is more of a set-piece and plot device than a character in this play – we hear of him early on through Egeon and S. Antipholus, but we don’t actually meet E. Antipholus until the third act of the play. What we do know about E. Antipholus is that he has an entirely established life in Ephesus – he lives with his wife Adriana, his sister-in-law Luciana, and he seems to know everybody there is to know in the city. Indeed, all of the comforts offered to S. Antipholus that he finds so enchanting (literally) stem from the reputation his brother has worked to build. E. Antipholus is mainly important as a contrast to S. Antipholus. E. Antipholus, unlike his brother, pays no attention to his lost family because he is absorbed entirely by the new life he’s built. Where S. Antipholus is discontent, E. Antipholus would be content. Where S. Antipholus is lonely, E. Antipholus is surrounded by people. S. Antipholus is quick to have faith that he’s in an enchanted place, while the more reasonable E. Antipholus is quick to grow angry and condemn all of the madness happening in this usually familiar place.

Most importantly, where S. Antipholus is thoughtfully melancholy, E. Antipholus has no time for such reflection. (S. Antipholus has no fewer than six asides and soliloquies, while E. Antipholus has none.) Arguably, this isn’t because E. Antipholus is such a bad guy. After all, his entire world has just been turned upside down. We only see him in the play when his life is at the height of confusion – his wife is denying him, his friends are calling him a liar, and he’s been arrested to boot. No man would be in top form under these circumstances. Ephesus used to be a paradise for E. Antipholus, and the arrival of S. Antipholus (and the subsequent confusion) has transformed Ephesus into E. Antipholus’s own personal hell. S. Antipholus experiences all of the glamorous confusion of a traveler greeted by strangers clamoring to be familiars. E. Antipholus, by turn, is the one who pays for that confusion, experiencing denial, betrayal, and wrongful punishment. We don’t get to see much in the way of personal development from him in the play, as we’re too focused on S. Antipholus and the trouble S. Antipholus is inadvertently causing his brother. In the final scene though, we get a hint that now that the confusion has cleared, both S. Antipholus and E. Antipholus can return to some normalcy.

Egeon

In The Comedy of Errors, Egeon plays the doting father of the lost twins. The man only appears in the first and final acts, but Egeon is incredibly important as a device to frame the action of the play. Though the play is a comedy, Egeon grounds the action in tragedy. He opens the play in a very grave position: He’d welcome death if it would free him from his woes, which are many. Egeon’s death sentence (which isn’t revisited until his final would-be death scene) casts a shadow over the rest of the action of the play, which is otherwise very merry. In the bulk of the play, silly things happen, and all the misunderstandings seem inconsequential enough, but the central action is bookended by the fairly dire situation of Egeon.

It seems Egeon can only function briefly in the play because he is such a tragic figure. He has lost both of his children, the servant boys he was intending to raise, and his wife, and we get the sense (from the stories of his travels) that he has wandered the world unsuccessfully seeking out his family as a reason to live. If we had to pity him throughout the whole play, it would detract from the mirth we should feel as we follow the comical errors of the main players. Still, when it comes time to have a resolution, Egeon’s character reminds us of how serious the issues in the play are – isolation, loss, suffering, nihilism, and aging are all central to appreciating Egeon. Egeon’s presence elevates the play to a kind of tragicomedy, adding dimensions that otherwise would be entirely missing.

One final note of interest on Egeon is how he is played in performance. Some productions deny the play any gravity. Accordingly, Egeon’s plight, which is really rather serious, is often made to seem comical by presenting him as a doddering, senile, and melodramatic old man. While the play has enough slapstick to float it as a frothy work, taking Egeon’s speeches seriously opens up a new breadth to the action. Life (as the play) may be really silly at times, but it’s the big grave questions (as they are presented by Egeon) that make it meaningful. We think Shakespeare might’ve agreed with us on this one – he gave Egeon some of the most moving and thoughtful speeches of the play, in spite of the fact that the guy does lack face-time.

Adriana

Adriana is E. Antipholus’s wife and Luciana’s sister. She spends much of the play worrying that her husband loves another woman. Adriana is most notable for her observations about a woman’s role in marriage, her lamentations over her lost love, and her obdurate loyalty in the face of what she believes to be adultery.

As a wife, Adriana is not the stereotypical shrewish and nagging woman. In the Plautus play that Shakespeare drew on to write The Comedy of Errors, Adriana’s equivalent character is so known for her shrewishness that she doesn’t even get a name – that alone is enough to characterize her. This stereotypical wife – jealous, possessive, and naggy – was one that Shakespeare’s audience would’ve been used to, so Shakespeare’s decision to turn Adriana into a more fully fleshed out woman (with a name) is significant.

Adriana speaks often in the play, and serves as a balance to her idealistic sister about the very real travails of love and marriage. She worries that her husband has gone wandering in love from her, but she accedes that this might be her own fault. Here, she embodies all the very real concerns of a faithful wife – perhaps she is no longer attractive to her husband, and while he might be at fault for his roving, she still loves him, and would do anything in her power to keep him. She isn’t totally rolled over, though; she says awful things about her husband, but she admits they’re only inspired by her distress over losing him. Adriana definitely knows more about love’s darker side than her sister, Luciana, but it doesn’t detract at all from the depth of love for her husband. Even when she thinks E. Antipholus is both unfaithful and insane, she says she’d like to have him come home because it’s a wife’s duty to take care of her man.

Despite our sympathy, we recognize that Adriana is still shrewish to some extent. When the Abbess talks to Adriana about how she needs to reign in E. Antipholus, Adriana admits that she has taxed her husband’s ear unendingly about his faithlessness. The Abbess catches her here: any man that is so complained against is bound to be unhappy. Though Adriana seems to know a lot about love and marriage, she doesn’t actually know enough to not nag her husband. In general, though, she’s a faithful and loving (even if concerned) wife, and she is one of Shakespeare’s few characters who embodies the real trials of love in marriage. Most of Shakespeare’s comedies end with marriages, but Adriana is a more realistic portrayal of what actually happens after the marriage takes place. Adriana, even in this farcical play, can be seen as Shakespeare’s nod to a difficult reality.

Antipholus of Syracuse

Antipholus of Syracuse is the younger half of a set of long-separated twins. He was raised with his father, Egeon, in Syracuse, and separated from his mother, Aemilia, and brother, Antipholus. S. Antipholus’s only traveling companion is his "bondsman," S. Dromio, a servant boy his father purchased to be his companion and attendant when both were newborn babies.

The conceit of the play rests on S. Antipholus’s decision to leave home. We learn from Egeon that as soon as S. Antipholus turned eighteen, he became "inquisitive" about his missing twin brother, and, along with S. Dromio, left his father to go find their respective other halves. S. Antipholus seems to have a wandering and inquisitive spirit. In addition to his wanderlust, he’s characterized by a grave loneliness. The first scene we meet S. Antipholus in he proclaims that he’ll go lose himself in the strange Ephesian city – which seems the habit of people that are used to being alone or anonymous. Then, S. Antipholus explains his loneliness to us almost immediately. He describes his lack of fulfillment when he says he feels like a drop of water that’s fallen into the ocean to look for one other drop of water. He feels alone without knowing his mother and brother, but he seems to seek them to form some part of his identity. He admits that in his search for them, he’s lost his own identity, but we also get the feeling the boy never really felt complete (or he might not have set out looking for his twin in the first place).

These traits are particularly interesting given S. Antipholus’s interaction with Luciana. He’s convinced that she’s unearthly, but rather than being wary or afraid of her, he pleads with her to teach him about himself. Just as he wanders geographically, he also wanders emotionally; it seems that in his love for Luciana he sees a chance to be grounded in a way that truly matters to him. It’s also important that he concedes that Luciana might herself be an enchantment. S. Antipholus’s explanation for much of the strangeness that occurs in Ephesus is magic. He’s willing to assume that explanation always lies outside of himself, either in dreams or in witches, because he has no true knowledge of himself.

Luciana

OK, this may seem a little far from Shakespeare, but bear with us for a second; we’re setting something up. If you saw any of the previews over the last couple of years for historical romantic comedies like Becoming Jane or Pride and Prejudice (the one with Keira Knightley, not the awesome BBC miniseries), you know that advertisers have decided that the best way to sell women in Ye Olde Englande to a modern audience is to bill them as "ahead of their time" – headstrong, opinionated women wanting to marry for love instead of family duty. Any Harlequin Romance writer knows that, to attract a contemporary audience to a woman character from before 1900, the author cannot make her old-fashioned, because it’s tough for a lot of modern readers to identify with a lady who really is just as quiet, obedient, and dutiful as her society might have expected her to be. This is pretty much the problem facing Luciana, one of the two primary women characters in The Comedy of Errors.

The thing is, Luciana’s sister Adriana totally upstages her all the time: Adriana storms onto the scene in Act I mad as hell at her husband for spending all his time with the Courtesan – and, literally, stepping out on her. Adriana has all the best lines: "Why should [men’s] liberty than ours be more?" and (again, on the subject of dutiful women) "There’s none but asses will be bridled so!"

But next to this outspoken lady (dare we say Adriana’s ahead of her time?), there’s meek Luciana, who tries to soothe her sister with the line, "[men] are masters to their females, and their lords" – and fat chance that’s going to work on Adriana’s righteous rage. If Adriana’s an early campaigner for women’s rights, Luciana is out there lobbying for the men, assuring her sister that when "[Luciana] learns love, [she]’ll practice to obey" her husband. We find it kind of hard to identify with her when she claims that, if she had a cheating husband, she would wait patiently "until he comes home again." It basically sounds like she’s advocating for a doormat model of womanhood that some modern audiences could find pretty difficult to swallow.

So, Act I has this pitched argument between the two sisters, with Adrianna standing for equality of the sexes (at least in marriage) and Luciana arguing for a definite order – men on top, women subservient. Fast forward to Act III, when Luciana finally reappears, and we get to see a second dimension of her character. The man whom she and Adriana have mistaken for Adriana’s husband, (but who is, in fact, S. Antipholus) proposes marriage to Luciana.

So this poor woman, who has confessed to fears of "the marriage bed" but who really wants to get hitched, gets a proposal – from the man she thinks is her brother-in-law. To Luciana’s credit, she doesn’t hesitate for a second to refuse him: "And may it be," she reproaches him, "that you have quite forgot/ A husband’s office?" She scolds him for being so obvious about cheating on Adriana ("Keep it on the down low!" she seems to be arguing). When Antipholus of Syracuse keeps insisting that he loves her, and that he doesn’t owe Adriana a thing, Luciana immediately goes to tell her sister that he’s been trying to hook up with her.

Of course, it's S. Antipholus who proposes to Luciana, not is E. Antipholus who’s married to her sister, so they can finally get engaged when all has been revealed. But here’s the thing about Luciana: that sense of duty to men that she preaches in the first act is still with her in the fifth act. However, it's totally secondary to the responsibility she feels to her sister, which leads her to confess Antipholus’s advances even though she’s really attracted to him. So Luciana may believe wholeheartedly in obedience to her husband, but she’s willing to give up a man’s proposal for the sake of her sister’s happiness. That hierarchy she set up earlier, with man above woman? Well, above that, for Luciana, is family loyalty – and that’s pretty hard not to like, for modern and old-fashioned audiences alike.