The Comedy of Errors: The Oxford Shakespeare

A Comedy of Errors is Shakespeare's shortest play yet one of his most popular comedies. Here is a new modern-spelling edition, based on the 1623 Folio text with on-page commentary and notes that explain meaning, staging, language and allusions. A detailed and informative introduction describes the play's first performance at Gray's Inn in December 1594, its multiple sources and its uneven critical and theatrical history. Appendices include the complete text of the play's main source, Plautus' Menaechmi, and extracts from Gesta Grayorum and the Geneva Bible. Illustrated with production photographs and related art, this edition vividly brings to life Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. "Not simply a better text but a new conception of Shakespeare. This is a major achievement of twentieth-century scholarship."--Times Literary Supplement