013 Poor Artists Imitate, Great Artists Steal: The Comedy of Errors

2023-03-31

How does a 400-year-old play feel more old-fashioned than a 2000-year-old one? Shakespeare brings family values, civic virtue, and basic human decency to Plautus’ farce of selfishness and hedonism. Like West Side Story to Roman and Juliet, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is to Plautus’ The Brothers Menaechmus. The mistaken identities and whirling confusion is the same but the values are not. Join us to discuss adaptations, sanitation, grafting a third dimension onto cardboard cut-outs, and the movie A...

How does a 400-year-old play feel more old-fashioned than a 2000-year-old one? Shakespeare brings family values, civic virtue, and basic human decency to Plautus’ farce of selfishness and hedonism.

Like West Side Story to Roman and Juliet, Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors is to Plautus’ The Brothers Menaechmus. The mistaken identities and whirling confusion is the same but the values are not.

Join us to discuss adaptations, sanitation, grafting a third dimension onto cardboard cut-outs, and the movie Airplane!

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Sources

The Oxford Shakespeare: The Comedy of Errors (Oxford University Press)

Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, edited by Brian Vickers (Routledge)

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