ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The Comedy of Errors, five-act comedy by William Shakespeare, written in 1589–94 and first published in the First Folio of 1623 from Shakespeare’s manuscript. It was based on Menaechmi by Plautus, with additional material from Plautus’s Amphitruo and the story of Apollonius of Tyre.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Comedy of Errors, five-act comedy by William Shakespeare, written in 1589–94 and first published in the First Folio of 1623 from Shakespeare’s manuscript.

Detailed explanation-3: -Scholars are divided about the play’s date of composition. Some argue that it was written in the very early 1590s but others maintain that 1594 is the more likely date and that it was, perhaps, expressly written for this performance before a legal audience at the end of that year.

Detailed explanation-4: -Set in the city of Ephesus, The Comedy of Errors concerns the farcical misadventures of two sets of identical twins. Many years earlier, the Syracusan merchant Egeon had twin sons, both named Antipholus. At their birth, he bought another pair of newborn twins, both named Dromio, as their servants.

Detailed explanation-5: -The list of Comedies included Measure for Measure and The Merchant of Venice, plays that modern audiences and readers have not found particularly ‘comic’. Also included were two late plays, The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale, that critics often now classify as ‘Romances’.