The New Oxford Shakespeare edition of The Comedy of Errors provides a friendly yet authoritative introduction to Shakespeare's beloved comedy.

'How many fond fools serve mad jealousy!'

The Comedy of Errors is one of Shakespeare's most farcical plays, with not one but two sets of twins sliding past each other into mistakes, violence, and madness. An early romantic comedy, it's often considered an immature play but also a piece of dramatic experimentation. This New Oxford Shakespeare edition examines links between Shakespeare's play and its literary sources and analogues, but also situates it within performance traditions. Illuminating points of comparison between The Comedy of Errors and Shakespeare's other comedies, as well as it's consonances with Shakespeare's later plays of estrangement and loss, this edition provides readers with a nuanced exploration of Shakespeare's shortest play.

The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.

Features

• Provides a rich historical and editorial context for the play, showing points of contact between The Comedy of Errors and its literary sources and analogues, both classical and contemporary
• Reappraises the play as a piece of dramaturgical experimentation, situating it not just alongside direct written sources but within the performance traditions of Shakespeare's time
• Pays sustained attention to the play's dramaturgical demands on its performers, and to its sympathetic demands upon its spectators, drawing on two productions staged in 2012
• Combines fresh, new scholarship from leading researchers with authoritative texts and comprehensive notes in order to offer readers a complete guide to Shakespeare
• Uses the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare: Modern Critical Edition collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work
• Presented in modern spelling and punctuation with accessible critical appartus to best aid understanding of the plays and poems

ABOUT THE SERIES

For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

General Editors' Preface to The New Oxford Shakespeare
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of William Shakespeare
THE COMEDY OF ERRORS

William Shakespeare

Ian Burrows, Edited by Sarah Neville, and Emma Smith.

Ian Burrows, Fellow of Clare College, University of Cambridge, Edited by Sarah Neville, Ohio State University, and Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Oxford.

Ian Burrows is a Fellow of Clare College, teaching and researching drama (and early modern drama in particular). He is especially interested in the exploration and exploitation of physicality in theatrical spaces, which he considers in his book Shakespeare for Snowflakes: On Slapstick and Sympathy, and which he continues to consider in the forthcoming Punctuation and Personality in Early Modern Printed Plays: Printing Hiccups. He is the co-convenor of the 'Beyond the Trigger' research programme, which uses techniques of embodied rehearsal and performance to reflect on the teaching of traumatic and traumatising literary material.

Sarah Neville is an Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University with a courtesy appointment in Theatre, Film, and Media Arts. She specializes in early modern English literature, bibliography, theories of textuality, and performance, chiefly examining the ways that authority is negotiated in print, digital, and live media. She is an assistant editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare (2016-17), for which she edited five plays in both old and modern-spelling editions, as well as an associate coordinating editor of the Digital Renaissance Editions.