How The Comedy of Errors drew on Acts
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Luke’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Acts
Luke · c. 85
BibleThe influenced
The Comedy of Errors
William Shakespeare · c. 1594
ShakespeareRelevance
7/10
On The Comedy of Errors’s page
- The play's Ephesus is Acts 19's Ephesus — Shakespeare relocated his Plautine farce there precisely to overlay Luke's city of sorcerers and exorcists
- The witchcraft motif and the exorcist Doctor Pinch draw directly on Acts 19:13-29, where would-be exorcists meet a city steeped in magic
- Read the source and the comedy's free-floating sense of bewitchment stops being a joke and starts looking deliberate
On Acts’s page
- Shakespeare moved his Roman farce to Ephesus specifically because of Acts 19, which paints the city as a hotbed of sorcery and exorcism
- The play's whole atmosphere of witchcraft — "There's none but witches to inhabit here" — and the exorcist Doctor Pinch grow straight out of Luke's account
- A book of scripture quietly supplied the supernatural dread that turns a mistaken-identity comedy into something stranger