This is one of the first literature's from the great legend William Shakespeare
. All the work from William Shakespeare is literally a literature. His books are referred in syllabus in schools and colleges all over the world. He is in true sense a king of English literature. There are so many contemporary authors whose work is supposedly inspired by him. Frankly I never read any of his books so when I come across The comedy of errors and immediately grab it.
Although the title says it is a book review in this article I am rather expressing the feelings after reading the book. As for the book I had very big expectation from it, it doesnt turn out that great that may be because of various reasons. First reason could be that the plot wasnt new for me; there are so many books and movies which are made on same plot. There is movie made in bollywood called Angoor which by the way one of my favorite movies. It is brilliantly enacted by Sanjeev Kumar which was based on this play. Of course the director used his creative freedom to plant the story in Indian continent and did that effectively. I read somewhere idea for this play has not been originated from Shakespeares mind. He got the idea from some French play. Anyway the point here is the story wasnt anything I never heard of.
And second thing is plays are always the medium for writers to depict the present political and social conditions. And Shakespeare must have written this book in as early as in 1500. Because of that some of the things are not as relevant or as funny today as they might have been at that time.
The book has story of two twin brothers and there twin slaves. It is a story of lot of coincidences and fun happen because of that. The story starts with a death threat hovering over a old merchant for breaking some silly rules. He tries to win dukes sympathy by telling him the story how he lost his family i.e. his wife and his two twin sons and there twin slaves. And he brake the rule as he is in search of them. Coincidentally one of his lost son and one slave was settled in same city for long time whos been happily married. Another coincidence happens when other twin brother and slave also visit the city. And there happen lot of kayos which results in slapstick comedy as everyone in the city as well as there family mistook their identity as not only the set of twins has identical faces but they have identical names. So you can imagine now what the situation could be and Shakespeare utilized it to the fullest.