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Tuesday, 18 August 2020

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare


Book Review of The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare 

The comedy of errors is one of the Shakespeare’s early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of humour coming from mistaken identity.

The book has story of two twin brothers and their twin slaves. The story starts with a death threat hovering over an old merchant for breaking some silly rules. He tries to win duke’s sympathy by telling him the story how he lost his family i.e. his wife and his two twin sons and their twin slaves. Coincidently one of his lost sons and one slave was settled in same city for long time.

Another coincidence happens when other twin brother and slave also visit the city. And there happen lot of chaos which results in slapstick comedy as everyone in the city as well as their family mistook their identity as not only the set of twins has identical faces but they have identical names.

There is a lot of fun and confusion, but, of course, it all ends happily ever after.

As for the book I had very big expectation from it, it doesn’t turn out that great that may be because of various reasons. First reason could be that the plot wasn’t new for me. And second thing is Shakespeare must have written this book in as early as in 1500 or 1600. Because of that some of the things are not as relevant or as funny today as they might have been at that time.

Despite the silliness of the plot it is a funny and quite enjoyable play.

The Comedy of Errors presents a spectacle of pure farce in the spirit of utmost fun and as the title suggests hilarious confusion.

It might not be a best work of Shakespeare but it is very good entertaining book. If I have to rate it, I will give it 8/10.

Book Review by Rekha Padra, Roll No. 45 / S.Y B.Ed. 2019-21 

Reference

Shakespeare, W. (2018). The comedy of errors. ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com 

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