Shakespeare is Shakespeare, but even he cannot make this plot any less than idiotic.

About the best that can be said of that plot is that it's not quite as moronic as that of the source material, a short play called Menaechmi, which is included as an appendix. There the main character, not five minutes after he relays his many years of journeying looking for his lost twin, is consistently mistaken for that twin by everyone he meets. And because he is a complete halfwit crippled with paranoia to the point where he's barely mentally functional, he doesn't even consider that the subject of his obsessive search might be in town. No, clearly the only explanation is that everyone's in on a plot to defraud him, a complete stranger who they did not expect and of whom they know nothing, of his worldly goods, such as they are. As I said, it's moronic.

I can only hope that The Comedy of Errors is funnier on stage than it is in print, but if I'm ever roped into seeing it I'm going to make sure I'm well drunk beforehand. It could only improve things.