ABSTRACT
In a society in which seniority is important, it was difficult to accommodate two persons of the same age. Until the seventeenth century, the Yoruba's solution, like many, was to banish or kill the twins and, often, their mother. After that date, the custom seems to have changed radically; twins began to be celebrated as a mark of nature's special blessing of the tribe. The great exception is Jonson's slightly older contemporary, William Shakespeare. Shakespeare is not only full of identical doubles, but even identical twins. A reasonable supposition would be that the effects he hoped to achieve from his use of twins were far different from the possibilities twins seemed to offer to Jonson. The comedy begins as Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse, a master and his servant arrive at Ephesus, where, unbeknown to them, their identical twins live — and are also called Antipholus and Dromio.
