THE COMEDY OF ERRORS
ADRIANA
Rocío García Viguer
In this paper
I want to talk about the main female character in The Comedy of Errors, that is
to say, Adriana. I have chosen this character because I think that she is an
important character in the sense that she talks about a very modern issue:
women’s identity when married and because she also serves as the contraposition
of the other main female role, her sister Luciana, who would be the
stereotypical “submissive woman”.
The first time the character of Adriana appears is in Act
II, scene i,1-3:
“Neither my husband nor
the slave return'd,
That in such haste I sent to seek his master!
Sure, Luciana, it is two o'clock.”
The first
thing we know about Adriana is that she is a worried rich and married woman:
she has a husband and a slave who is looking for him. Then Luciana tells her
not to worry because “A man
is master of his liberty:/Time is their master, and, when
they see time,/They'll go or come: if so, be patient, sister.”[1]
to which Adriana answers: “Why should their liberty than ours be more?”[2].
This is one of the many times that Adriana shows her modernity, she is
objecting to the double stantdards applying to male and female behaviour, so we
learn that although being a high-class married woman, she does not fit the
pattern of a married woman of the time. Moreover, Adriana and Luciana, in their
discussion of marriage, are showing their personalities: while Adriana is the
“modern” woman, Luciana is the model of submission to the husband, “This servitude makes you to
keep unwed.”[3] tells her Adriana.
She thinks that if Luciana were married she would have power over her husband
and Luciana believes that Adriana should have learned to obey before learning
to love, which is a very clear statement showing Luciana’s views, but Adriana
knows that Luciana has no experience in marriage, so she does not take her
commentaries seriously.
Now enters the character of Dromio of Ephesus who has not
found Antipholus of Ephesus, but his brother Antipholus of Syracusa, who, not
understanding Dromio’s requests to go home, beats him. And now, having returned
home without the loose husband, he is in danger of being beaten again by
Adriana, who is very angry and anxious. Therefore Shakespeare is presenting us
here another aspect of the character of Adriana: she is as strong and
frightening for Dromio as would be any man. She is the one really governing
that house, the “man”. When Dromio goes out the scene, we see another aspect of
the character of Adriana: she really loves her husband but she is angry with
him because of his constant absences from home and she imagines that he spends
his time outside home with other women, this reflecting her extreme jealousy,
which confirms the last words of Luciana at the end of the scene: “How many fond fools serve
mad jealousy!”[4].
In the next scene we see that Adriana’s feelings about
the behaviour of her husband is produced, to some extent, by her views of
marriage as a mixture of identities in which both individual identities emerge
as one only identity:
That thou art thus
estranged from thyself?
Thyself I call it, being
strange to me,
That, undividable,
incorporate,
Am better than thy dear
self's better part.”[5]
And further
on “For if we too be one
and thou play false,/
I do digest the poison of thy flesh,/Being strumpeted by
thy contagion”[6]. But this view is
counterproductive and it provokes the lies of her husband in the next scene to
cover for his absences and when he is kept outside his home he decides to go
with the Courtesan in some kind of revenge against Adriana, for he knows she is
jealous and this will make her more jealous if possible; he is paying her back
for not allowing him to enter his home.
Unlike Adriana, Luciana may accept infidelity if the
husband acts in a discreet way and pretends to love his wife: “Be not thy tongue thy own
shame's orator;/Look sweet, be fair, become disloyalty;/Apparel vice like virtue's harbinger;/Bear a
fair presence, though your heart be tainted;/Teach sin the
carriage of a holy saint;/Be secret-false: what need she be
acquainted?” [7]
and further on: “'Tis holy
sport to be a little vain,/When the sweet breath of flattery
conquers strife.”[8]
but in her speech she, without knowing it, is giving permission to his future
husband to cheat her. In this way, her views of marriage are as
counterproductive as Adriana’s ones.
Despite her jealousy, Adriana really loves her husband as
we see when he is imprisoned and she does not hesitate in giving Dromio the
money necessary to set him free and although she is very angry and curses him
her “heart prays for him”[9].
At the end of the play Aemilia, who at the beginning of her appearance seems to
reprimand Adriana for not having been hard enough with her husband suddenly
changes her speech to tell her that precisely that jealousy and constant
reprimands is what has driven her husband mad: “And thereof came it that the man was mad./The venom clamours of a jealous woman/Poisons
more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.”[10]
and further on “The
consequence is then thy jealous fits/Have scared thy husband
from the use of wits.”[11] This last speech makes Adriana change her
behaviour towards her husband in being more comprehensive and patient,
resembling Luciana’s views.
Therefore, as
we have seen so far, Adriana is depicted as a young married woman who lives in
Ephesus with her husband, sister and servants. She is very jealous and
non-conformist, and because of this she cannot enjoy a happy marriage, her
possessiveness prevents her from doing so given that she feels really
distressed when her husband is not by her side; she needs her other half.
Regarding the
question of married women’s identity, Adriana has two sides. The fierce and
modern side, which stands for her longing for freedom and her power inside the
marriage, and the loving and desperate side, which shows a very different
Adriana: one who loves her husband deeply and would do anything for the
continuity of her marriage. And we will see that the Adriana that survives
after Aemilia’s speech, at the end of the play, is the second one, the caring
and loving more submissive wife,
resembling Luciana in this respect.
As the main female character, she obviously plays and
important role in the play: she is the one who sends Dromio to find her husband
and then is when all the “errors” begin, that is to say all the confusions
between the two Antipholus. In this respect, she is an indispensable character
in the play, for she starts the main action of the plot. Moreover, she is much
more dynamic than any other character in the play: at the end of the play she
decides to change his behaviour toward her husband in an attempt to save her
marriage from future crisis.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
-
Shakespeare, William. “Las
Alegres Comadres de Windsor y La Comedia de las Equivocaciones”, Colección
Austral, Espasa-Calpe Argentina S. A., Buenos Aires, 1944.
-
http://www.novelguide.com/TheComedyofErrors
-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Comedy_of_Errors
-
http://www.sparknotes.com/shakespeare/errors
-
http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/errors