A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Rhyme in the Comedy of Errors
In direct opposition to that opinion, I plan to show that Shakespeare exhibits artistic mastery in the way he cleverly interweaves rhyme throughout his plays, effectively manipulating how audiences view the action onstage. I also plan to demonstrate how we need to help students discover the intricacies of rhyme in the plays to learn to navigate through Shakespeare’s difficult texts. This is not to suggest that we can dispense a magic formula that will help students negotiate meaning, where “rhyme” can be plugged into an interpretation equation rather, students who learn to pay close attention to the rhyme, in the context of the dramatic piece they are watching, may find some clues that will help them better understand the complexities of that play. And although rhyme undoubtedly occupies a role in most (if not all) of Shakespeare’s dramas, my discussion here will be limited to three of his earliest plays: The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronicus, and Romeo and Juliet. In all three, Shakespeare’s use of rhyme affects auditors differently, and if we can help students see the importance of the rhyme (or lack thereof), we may be able to help them better understand and appreciate Shakespeare’s works.
The Comedy of Errors has 1,760 lines, 498 of which (28%) end in rhyme. End rhyme is relatively common in Shakespeare’s plays; it is used at the ends of many Shakespearean scenes to signal the completion of action and to accentuate the final words spoken by characters onstage. However, The Comedy of Errors incorporates a great deal of rhyme within the scenes. The many examples of perfect and slant rhyme are important and integral parts of The Comedy of Errors because those rhymes, in concert with the action performed onstage, influence an audience’s reaction to the play.
In addition to a harmonic melody, perfect rhyme forms a parallel structure with the plot because it appears almost exclusively in the text at moments of resolution for characters and in lines that strengthen character relationships. And since perfect rhyme is harmonious, it understandably occurs most often in the play when characters are at peace with their situations in life. For example, in 1.1, the Duke of Ephesus sentences Egeon to death.
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My woes end likewise with the evening sun. The calm that Egeon exhibits during a scene about his death sentence is punctuated with perfect rhyme, helping audiences experience his acceptance of his fate. Tellingly, in 2.2, when Antipholus of Syracuse and Dromio of Syracuse first encounter Adriana and Luciana, they embark on an adventure that they don’t understand—a moment that some actors or directors might be inclined to interpret as one of disequilibrium and uncertainty. The perfect rhymes of the following short soliloquy help us to see, however, that this moment of real uncertainty and possible danger is in fact a moment when Antipholus of Syracuse is calm of mind and driven mostly by a self-possessed curiosity and possibly foolhardy adventurousness:
Adriana: Come, sister [Luciana]. Dromio, play the porter well.
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