“A Night of Errors”: Chaos, Comedy, and Comparative Law at the Inns of Court

Abstract

Festivities at the Gray’s Inn Revels of 1594–1595, as narrated in the Gesta Grayorum, included the first recorded performance of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. Revels at the Inns were intricate affairs parodying government rule, often involving a fictional coronation, parliament, plays, and mock trials. Recent studies in law and literature have detailed how revels created artificial city states that raised numerous questions about legal regulation and self-governance. On December 28, 1594, the Gesta Grayorum claims Shakespeare’s play created a “Night of Errors” that led to a lengthy mock trial the next day. In this article, I analyze the commerce of legal ideas occurring between Shakespeare’s play, its source in Plautus’s Menaechmi, and the ensuing commentary from the mock trial in order to demonstrate that key generic elements of Roman comedy became central to legal training at the Inns. I illustrate this intertextual development of comedy to reveal its power in representing and critiquing how law is performed in communities.