What Shakespeare did, of course, was take pedestrian
pieces of work and endow them with distinction and, very
often, greatness. Before he reworked it Othello was insipid
melodrama. In Lear’s earlier manifestation, the king was not
mad and the story had a happy ending. Twelfth Night and Much
Ado About Nothing were inconsequential tales in a collection of
popular Italian fiction. Shakespeare’s particular genius was to
take an engaging notion and make it better yet. In The Comedy
of Errors, he borrows a simple but effective plot device from
Plautus—having twin brothers who have never met appear in
the same town at the same time—but increases the comic potential
exponentially by giving the brothers twin servants who
are similarly underinformed.
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