I cannot fully express to you how happy I am to be done with The Comedy of Errors. The plot was so confusing and the characters so flavorless that I didn’t find myself enjoying it at all. As I suspected, Act V was hurried mop-up of the plot, consisting of only one scene in which everything gets sorted out and all of our dummies live happily ever after.
The whole act takes place in front of a priory, where both sets of twins are confronted by the various people who have taken issue with them and as Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse are taken into the priory by the good abbess Aemelia, the other pair seek satisfaction from the Duke, who happens to be passing by on his way to execute Aegeon. You remember him? The guy from the very beginning of the play whose life has been hanging in the balance while the rest of these yahoos attempt to navigate their way out of a paper bag? Yeah, him. Anyway, Aegeon sees Antipholus and Dromio of Ephesus and asks his son to buy his freedom from the Duke. Antipholus is confused because he never had a father. Then the other Antipholus and Dromio emerge from the priory with the abbess, and not only are the twins reunited, but it turns out the abbess is actually their mother, so they are one big happy family again. Now, everyone explains to each other what must have happened, and everyone walks away happy. Seriously, it took about 100 lines of dialogue to clear up the mess that this entire play made. Then the play just abruptly ends. Thank goodness.
I can’t even with this play. I didn’t really think I was going to find this play funny, but I really didn’t think it was going to make me as angry as it did. I guess watching a bunch of buffoons get angry with each other using clever wordplay rather than just communicating a single clear sentence just isn’t the way I want to spend my time. I am quite glad to move back into the tragedies with Titus Andronicus as the next play on the docket.
Hey, Shakespeare! 