In “The Comedy of Errors,” the action takes place in the ancient Greek city of Ephesus.
Ephesus provides the setting for Shakespeare’s farce about two pairs of identical twins separated in a shipwreck. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in the city while unknowingly encountering their identical brothers, who already live there. The resulting confusion drives nearly every comic incident.
The city is also important because of its law against merchants from Syracuse. That rule places the old merchant Aegeon in immediate danger of execution when he is discovered in Ephesus without the required money. The city’s authorities, households, markets, inns, and religious institutions become entangled as characters mistake one twin for another.
Syracuse is a major alternative in the story, but it is the birthplace of one set of characters and the home from which the searching twins depart. Rome and Athens are not the play’s principal setting. Shakespeare adapted much of the mistaken-identity plot from Plautus’s Roman comedy “Menaechmi.”