SOURCE: Whitworth, Charles. “Rectifying Shakespeare's Errors: Romance and Farce in Bardeditry.” In The Comedy of Errors: Critical Essays, edited by Robert S. Miola, pp. 227-60. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997.

In the essay below, originally published in 1991, Whitworth studies the romantic elements of The Comedy of Errors, urging that the play be recognized as romance in its form and in much of its substance. Whitworth focuses in particular on the structure, content, and language of the framing tale of Egeon of Syracuse.

What in the world can/should/does an editor do to the text of a Shakespeare play?¹ We are reminded by a growing host of performance critics but also, and more significantly, by textual scholars and editors, that play texts are both potential, to be realized in performance, rather than ends in themselves, and, as things in themselves, unstable. We are enjoined to privilege those early...