La Comedia of Errors and the Possibilities of Comic Endings en La Frontera
By Katherine Gillen, Adrianna M. Santos, and Kathryn Vomero Santos
Volume 2 of The Bard in the Borderlands contains four plays firmly rooted in the particularities of place, resituating Shakespeare within vivid settings of the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands both past and present. Conceived with and for local communities, these reimaginings of The Merchant of Venice, The Winter’s Tale, Measure for Measure, and The Comedy of Errors reopen and redress colonial wounds within the artistic sanctuary of the public theater. Whereas the plays in Volume 1 drew primarily from Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet, these works activate Shakespeare’s complex treatment of comedy — often inflected with tragedy — to create opportunities for collective critique, laughter, and liberation.
Lydia G. Garcia and Bill Rauch’s bilingual La Comedia of Errors (2019) is an adaptation developed by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) in partnership with community members, that emphasizes the linguistic plurality of the Americas, bringing Shakespeare’s English text together with Spanish as it is spoken in various regions. Co-adaptors, Rauch and Garcia began with the modernized text developed by Christina Anderson for the Play On Shakespeare series, where Garcia translated sections of the script into Spanish. This multilayered process created opportunities for both witty bilingual humor and pointed critique of the separation of families at the increasingly militarized U.S.–Mexico border.
Although La Comedia of Errors is the most traditionally comedic adaptation in the volume, it underscores the pain and alienation that often drive Shakespeare’s comic plots. Opening with an acto that echoes the artistic methods of Chicanx teatro, La Comedia places Shakespeare’s early farce about mistaken identity within a bilingual Latinx community, mobilizing linguistic misunderstandings to deliver trenchant social commentary. The twins share names and heritages, as they do in Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors, but here they speak different languages because they have grown up on either side of the border after they were separated from each other in a tragic plane crash. The comic plot emerges from the tragedy of family separation, and many characters live in fear of deportation. As Antífolo de México says in frustration, “Este sueño americano es una pesadilla” (4.3). In La Comedia, which dramatizes the thin line between dreams and reality, sanity and insanity, the so-called American Dream becomes a nightmare. Though the play ends with the happy reunion of the twins and their parents, it is nevertheless marked by grief for the incredible loss of time together. The tragic undertones of comedy resonate in La Comedia’s Borderlands contexts, calling attention to unjust social policies even as the production itself offers a sense of joy and community.
The primary strategy that Garcia and Rauch used to make this production accessible to multilingual audiences was to incorporate acts of real-time translanguaging into the bilingual world of the play itself. Several characters serve both informally and formally as interpreters. For instance, when the Sheriff’s Deputy — an English speaker with a working knowledge of Spanish — interprets for Egeón as he is threatened with deportation, he is also serving as an interpreter for Spanish-speaking members of the audience. Upon their arrival in the United States, Antífolo de México similarly translates both for Drómio de México and for the benefit of those in the audience who might not understand the guide’s instructions about how to behave and speak to avoid calling attention to their undocumented status.
The most dynamic interpreter in this production, however, is La Vecina, a bilingual neighbor figure who is both “part of and local to the audience.” Using culturally specific humor, this character interprets the action for audience members while also offering hilarious and sometimes biting commentary. La Vecina’s witty rejoinders remind the audience, moreover, that the discomfort resulting from witnessing Dromio and Drómio’s abuse at the hands of Antipholus and Antífolo is intentional.
In the final scene of the play, Antífolo de México, mistakenly suspected of cheating a jeweler of the money he is owed, seeks sanctuary in the chapel of the convent where his mother Emilia once sought refuge. Antífolo’s experience recalls the many undocumented immigrants who have been similarly protected in places of worship. It is in this poignant moment of reunion, moreover, that Emilia recognizes the husband from whom she has been separated for thirty-three years.
Re-enter EMILIA from the chapel with ANTÍFOLO DE MÉXICO and DRÓMIO DE MÉXICO.
EMILIA
My community, behold a man much wronged.All gather to see them.
ADRIANA
I see two husbands, o la vista me engaña.SHERIFF SOLINUS
One of these men is shadow to the other;
And so of these, which is the natural man,
And which the spirit?DROMIO OF U.S.A.
I, sir, am Dromio. Tell him to go away.DRÓMIO DE MÉXICO
Yo soy Drómio. ¡Que él se vaya, oficial de la ley!ANTÍFOLO DE MÉXICO
¿Padre mío, eres tú? ¿O su fantasma?DRÓMIO DE MÉXICO
¡Ay, Don Egeón! ¿Quién te tiene esposado?EMILIA
Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds
And gain a husband by his liberty.
Dinos, viejo Egeón, ¿eres el hombre
Que una vez tuvo una esposa llamada Emilia,
Quien un día dio a luz a dos hermosos hijos?
Si eres el mismo Egeón, habla,
Y hablarás con la misma Emilia.EGEÓN
Los sueños, sueños son. Pero si eres Emilia,
Un sueño querido se ha hecho realidad.
¿Qué les pasó a estos niños que desaparecieron
Contigo en aquel día catastrófico?EMILIA
Después del accidente en el desierto,
Nos recogió la migra de este país,
Me arrancaron a Drómio y a mi hijo,
Dejándome en el medio de la nada.EGEÓN
¿Cómo te encontraste en este convento?EMILIA
Necesitaba la seguridad del refugio.LA VECINA
This undocumented woman went and got herself to a nunnery. (5.1)
In this scene, Egeón and his sons learn that Emilia was separated from the U.S.-based twins by la migra, the border patrol, following the plane crash that divided the family. La Vecina’s humorous riff on Hamlet has serious undertones — even as it translates the action for monolingual English speakers, it reveals the importance of sanctuary for undocumented people. And Shakespeare’s misogynist joke is transformed to affirm the resilience of an undocumented mother. Despite the deep losses that the play’s central family has experienced during their thirty-three-year separation, the final act ends on a note of hope and comic joy. Reprising the language of dreams from earlier in the play, Egeón describes their reunion as a long-deferred dream come true. For him and his family, “Un sueño querido se ha hecho realidad.”
Across the plays in this volume, the theater, too, serves as a source of sanctuary — a site of collaboration, solidarity, and hope. Through the composition, production, and performance of these plays, communities come together to act as witnesses to cycles of tragic violence, to heal the wounds of the past, and to imagine futures in which comic endings are possible.
Volume 2 of The Bard in the Borderlands will be published in print and Open Access on August 13, 2024. For more information about the Borderlands Shakespeare Colectiva visit borderlandsshakespeare.org.
Katherine Gillen is Professor of English at Texas A&M University–San Antonio. The author of Chaste Value: Economic Crisis, Female Chastity, and the Production of Social Difference on Shakespeare’s Stage, she studies issues of race, gender, colonialism, and economics in early modern drama. Gillen is currently working on a monograph tentatively titled Shakespeare’s Racial Classicism: Whiteness, Slavery, and Humanism
Adrianna M. Santos, Associate Professor of English at Texas A&M University–San Antonio, has built her career on work that is deeply rooted in and accountable to Chicanx communities. Her book Cicatrix Poetics, Trauma and Healing in the Literary Borderlands: Beyond Survival (Palgrave 2024) examines Chicana survival narratives as a critical facet of social justice work. She has research expertise in cultural production, performance, and pedagogy.
Kathryn Vomero Santos is Associate Professor of English at Trinity University. She specializes in the study of translation, race, and colonialism in Shakespeare and his afterlives. She is currently completing a book titled Shakespeare in Tongues, which situates Shakespeare’s legacy within conversations about multilingualism, assimilation, and resistance in U.S. imperial contexts.
