A Play of Errors and Confusion A Play of Errors and Confusion Author Kate McPherson Copy Editor Leah Hamby Senior Encoder Leah Hamby Encoding and Metadata LEMDO Team Copyright Holder (Content) Kate McPherson Copyright Holder (XML and interface) University of Victoria Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Mitacs Globalink Research Internship Utah Valley University

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Early Modern England Encyclopedia

By Kate McPherson, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions

Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines

This document uses Canadian English spelling

 Published file. Updated metadata proofed swapped the desc and figDescs to be correct. updated image sources, added two figures. Added date, pubPlace, and publisher tags to sources Changed xml ids to EPComedyOfErr Corrected two typos and added a title tag in bibliography. Added Shakespeare’s Life and Times database to Best sources. Corrected a typo in Kate’s name while trying to figure out the build break. Finished coding sources. Created File.
Interior (c. 1925) of Gray’s Inn hall where The Comedy of Errors was performed in 1594. Image courtesy of British History Online. Public Domain.
Recorded Performance of The Comedy of Errors

Official records indicate Shakespeare’s playing company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, performed The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn, the largest of the London Inns of Court where young gentlemen studied law, on December 28th, 1594. The play was part of the Christmas law revels, the first Yuletide festivities in four years due to the recent long outbreak of bubonic plague. Gray’s Inn was noted for its elaborate masques and revels. In that year, the festivities extended the full twelve days of Christmas, from the 27th of December to the 6th of January.

A book written in 1595 (but not published until 1688) called Gesta Grayorum (Gray’s Performances) describes the evening that became known as The Night of Errors. It notes that A Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the Players. The hubbub that followed gave the night its infamous name.

Gesta Grayorum observes that the crowd was large and unruly, so it was thought good not to offer any thing of Account, saving Dancing and Revelling with Gentlewomen... and a Comedy of Errors... which was played by the Players. It continues: So that Night was begun, and continued to the end, in nothing but Confusion and Errors; whereupon, it was ever afterwards called, The Night of Errors.

Other commentary about the performance includes the mild complaint that the players were foisted on the members of Gray’s Inn, and they are characterized as a Company of base and common Fellows, to make up our Disorders with a Play of Errors and Confusions. These complaints appear to shift the blame for the rowdy night from the audience to the entertainers. In an ending fitting for a comedy and law students, a mock-trial held the next day blamed the incident on a sorcerer.

Title page of Gesta Grayorum (1688). Courtesy of the Folger Shakespeare Library. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Gray’s Inn and Early Modern Theater

Gray’s Inn, like most colleges, used its great hall for formal dinners and performances as well as for its Christmas festivities. Many notable figures from the English early modern period trained as lawyers at Gray’s Inn, including Lord Burleigh, who was Queen Elizabeth’s most trusted courtier and Secretary of State, the privateer and explorer Sir Walter Raleigh, the Queen’s spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, author and scientist Lord Francis Bacon, and also Shakespeare’s patron, Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton. The hall hosted numerous forms of entertainment for its elite students, patrons, and alumni.

A Two-Show Day?

Curiously, court records for payments for the Queen’s Christmas festivities records note that Shakespeare, Burbage, and Kempe were paid £10 for a performance of the same play that day before the Queen at Greenwich. Perhaps this means that there was an afternoon performance of The Comedy of Errors at Greenwich, and the company simply took the six-mile journey up the Thames into the City on London and on to Gray’s Inn for an evening show.

Key Print Sources Knapp, Margaret, and Michal Kobialka. Shakespeare and the Prince of Purpoole: The 1594 Production of <title level="m">The Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn Hall. Theatre History Studies, vol. 4, no. 71, 1 Jan. 1984, pp. 70–81. Potter, Lois. The Life of William Shakespeare: a Critical Biography. Wiley-Blackwell, 7 May 2012. pp. 151–155. The Comedy of Errors. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare, edited by Michael Dobson, Stanley Wells, Will Sharpe, and Erin Sullivan, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 84–86.
Key Online Sources Best, Michael. A Comedy of Errors and Confusion. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions, https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/life/youth/errors.html. Accessed 20 Feb. 2023. Gray’s Inn: Inn of Court. Shakespearean London Theatres, https://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/locations/grays-inn/indepth.html. Accessed 20 Feb. 2023. Nelson, Alan H. Gesta Grayorum: References to Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors at Gray’s Inn Revels 1594–95. Shakespeare Documented, 25 Jan. 2020, DOI 10.37078/208.
Image Sources Interior of Gray’s Inn hall. c. 1925. Photograph. British History Online. Title page of Gesta Grayorum. 1688. MS. Folger Shakespeare Library. Shakespeare Documented. doi.org/10.37078/208.