ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Comedy of Errors (CE) and the evidence that it was written specifically for the festivities. The first known performance of The Comedy of Errors took place at the 1594–1595 Gray’s Inn Christmas revels, an account of which appears in the Gesta Grayorum (GG) published in 1688. There is no evidence that Shakespere’s company had possession of this play in 1594. The first known association of Shakespere with the play occurs when Francis Meres mentions Shakespeare and “his Errors” in Palladis tamia. In the early 1590s, the theatres and other places of congregation in London had been closed by the plague, so the 1594–1595 Christmas revels at Gray’s Inn law school at High Holborn were the first for “three or four yeares”. Reginald Fletcher claims that the author of the GG demonstrates “the naive expression of a low esteem for the ‘Comedy of Errors’ and its author”.
