potential, here serves chiefly to keep us advised of situation. Here
are no malapropisms, dialectal oddities, few quirks and twists of
phrase: the very pun, hereafter ubiquitous, is scanted. With neither
character nor language making notable comic contribution, then,
the great resource of laughter is the exploitable gulf spread between
the participants' understanding and ours.

This gap is held open from beginning to end: it is available for
exploitation and is exploited during ten of the eleven scenes. In the
course of the action we hold an advantage in awareness over fifteen
of the sixteen persons -- Aemilia alone never being exhibited on a
level beneath ours. Not until The Tempest (in the comedies) did
Shakespeare again hold one gap open so long for exploitation; never
again did he place so great a responsibility on a single gap.

As in most later plays, Shakespeare here opens the gap -- that is to
say, raises our vantage point above that of the participants -- as soon
as possible. After forty lines in Scene ii (at the entrance of Dromio
of Ephesus) the facts of the enveloping situation are fixed in our
minds: a father, facing death unless he can raise money by sunset,
his twin sons, long separated, and their twin servants are all in the
city of Ephesus. But the key fact that is quickly revealed to us is
denied them: they are ignorant that all are in the same city. On our
side, thus, is complete vision, and on theirs none at all. This condi-
tion, kept essentially unchanged, is made to yield virtually all of the
comic effects during ten scenes.

In that the secret committed to our keeping is both simple and
single, The Comedy of Errors is unique among the comedies. In
later ones our awareness is packed, often even burdened, with mul-
tiple, complex, interrelated secrets, and the many circles of indivi-
dual participants' visions, though they cross and recross one another,
do not wholly coincide. In Twelfth Night, thus, certain but not all
facts of the intricate situation are known to both Sir Toby and Sir
Andrew, and some are known to Sir Toby but not to Sir Andrew;
a few, but only a few, are shared by Viola and Sir Toby; some are
known to Viola alone of the participants; and one fact of enormous
significance, known to us alone, is hidden even from Viola. In The
Comedy of Errors only a single great secret exists, which is ours
alone; the participants, therefore, stand all on one footing of
ignorance. Shakespeare never again used so simple an arrangement
of the awarenesses.

The enveloping situation which makes both action and comic
effects possible is itself static; it remains unchanged, until the last
100 lines, by the bustling incidents that fill up the scenes between
beginning and end. Between the point midway in the second scene,

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