Believed to be one of WS's first plays, The Comedy of Errors is a take on an earlier (BC Era) Roman comedic play, Menaechmi, but in true WS fashion - kicked up a notch by adding another set of twins to the craziness!
Short summary - Father and 1 of his twin sons and 1 of the twin servants to his sons (of the same age) are separated at sea from Mother and the other sets of twins. 30 years later they all are in the same town unbeknownst to one another and all kinds of mistaken identity occurs to the tune of high hilarity.
The smacking of pates (which happens quite often) is of Stooges variety slapstick.
And the puns and wordplay are numerous and sometimes lost in the word meanings that have changed over time; to catch them all one would need to embark on a deeper study of the play itself and Shakespeare (and many scholars have done so!)
I thoroughly enjoyed the back and forth between Atipholus and Dromio (Syracusians) in regards to the loss of time/loss of hair:
"Dromio: Marry, sir, by a rule as plain as the plain bald pate of Father Time himself.
***
Dromio: There's no time for a man to recover his hair that grows bald by nature.
Antipholus: May he not do it by fine and recovery?
Dromio: Yes, to pay a fine for a periwig and recover the lost hair of another man.
***
Dromio:...The one [reason], to save the money he spends in trimming; the other, that at dinner they [hair] should not drop in his porridge.
***
Dromio:...Time himself is bald and therefore to the world's end will have bald followers.
Antipholus: I knew 'twould be a bald conclusion."
And poor Dromio of Syracuse who discovers Dromio of Ephesus' wife, Nell (a rather large woman):
"No longer from head to foot than from hip to hip: she is spherical, like a globe; I could find out countries in her."
when she mistakes him for her husband. And Dromio (S) is beside himself:
"She's the kitchen-wench, and all grease; and I know not what use to put her to but to make a lamp of her and run from her by her own light, I warrant, her rags and the tallow in them will burn a Poland winter. If she lives till doomsday, she'll burn a week longer than the whole world."
While the play lacks some of the depth of WS's later works, (though there is commentary to be found on marriage and social class structure) it is one of his most farcical, and like most of his works, stands the test of time. The film Big Business (1988) was adapted from The Comedy of Errors.
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