The Comedy of Errors

The characters of the play inhabit a highly commercial world, in which their trade and wealth are closely connected to their reputations, relationships, and fate. The stakes in the comedic exchanges around mistaken identity often revolve around money and material goods. The play is set in the context of a trade war, with Egeon facing death for being a merchant from a rival city. Through all of these elements, the play examines the importance of wealth and commerce. 

The characters’ commercial selves are intertwined with their broader social selves, as reputation and business are fundamentally linked. The chain of debt from the Second Merchant to Angelo to Antipholus rests on the idea that a person’s financial behavior shows their character, which in turn determines their financial behavior. The characters cannot believe that this link can fail, discussing Antipholus’s solid reputation with bemusement as Angelo notes, “his word might bear my wealth at any time” (V.1.8). Similarly, the Courtesan cannot believe that Antipholus would cheat her financially as it goes against his character and reputation: She sees his apparent defaulting on a promised transaction as proof that he must be “mad.