The Comedy of Errors

High school (ages 12+)
Art & Creativity

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/the-comedy-of-errors

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. Who wrote The Comedy of Errors?William Shakespeare
2. What is the estimated premiere?Late 1580s or early 1590s
3. What is the source material?Likely inspired by Plautus's Roman play Menaechmi
4. What is 'The Comedy of Errors' about?It is Shakespeare's shortest play, telling the story of two sets of identical twins who get mixed up in the city of Ephesus, causing lots of funny misunderstandings.
5. Why do the characters keep getting confused?Because the twins look exactly the same and they are in the same city, so people mistake one for the other, leading to silly situations.

Farce: A comic dramatic work using buffoonery and horseplay and typically including crude characterization and ludicrously improbable situations.
Dramatic Irony: When the audience knows something that the characters in the play do not.
Idiom: A phrase or expression whose meaning is figurative and cannot be deduced from the literal meaning of its words.