The Comedy of Eros (2002)

Rosacea (Alexandra Innes)
and Lothargio (Doug MacKay)
Photo by Daniel Frey

Kari Macknight and Geordie Telfer

The Comedy of Eros, by Geordie Telfer and Kari Macknight, was advertised as the "ribald comedy Shakespeare would have written were he not a better writer." But it may also be advertised as the play Benny Hill would have written if he were a better writer. The play is a caricature of Shakespeare, borrowing his most obvious literary devices for this gender-bending lampoon: shipwrecked twins (A Comedy of Errors), disguised identities (Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing), an apothecary (Romeo and Juliet), cross dressing (Twelfth Night), a blundering servant, and a play within a play (Hamlet).

A set of identical but differently gendered twins, Coriander the sister and Cilantro the brother, are shipwrecked on their way to Coriander's marriage with Asiago, the cheese merchant. They are discovered on the beach by Testicles, a gay apothecary: "Indeed, I am not merely an apothecary, I am an homeopath" (16), who advises them to take shelter in the home of the lazy Duke Lothargio. In order to avoid being discovered, Testicles switches their hats and puts Cilantro's mustache on Coriander, and voila! brother becomes sister and sister brother under the names "Cubanelle" and "Habanero."

At Lothargio's court, Coriander is attracted to Lothargio and Cilantro is attracted the Duchess Rosacea, Lothargio's former lover, but Lothargio and Rosacea are attracted to the opposite twin's disguises. Coriander and Cilantro decide to stay in disguise to test the Duke and Duchess. The twins and Lothargio also ask Testicles to make them love potions, which the confused maidservant Credenza, played by a man, mixes up, causing the twins to lust after each other and Rosacea to advance amorously upon the confused Lothargio. Finally, as the play rushes towards its 'climax,' Testicles negates the influence of the potions and reveals the identities of the twins.

The Comedy of Eros cast
Photo by Kari Macknight

The Comedy of Eros is unashamedly vulgar, packed with as many sexual innuendos and double entendres as Telfer and Macknight could fit into the hour-long play. Cilantro complains that he is tired of being pursued by the daughters of the nobles of Europe "with their foreign tongues" because "their tongues are sharp, and 'tis I who get licked" (5). According to Cilantro, Rosacea's "endowments stack well in her favour" (13), and Coriander notes that "Lord Lothargio is an appealing package, ripe for the unwrapping" (13). As payment for gathering information on "Cubanelle" and "Habanero," Rosacea pours gold coins into Credenza's apron: "let this tinkling golden shower purchase your fealty as my peon" (15). For the same services, Lothargio gives Credenza a "pearl necklace" (15). Even Shakespeare is reduced to a penis joke: "Tis as if the sturdy phalanx of his reason, has dwindled to a single shaking spear" (17).

Shakespeare would have been right at home with Telfer and Macknight's vulgarity. In 1947, Eric Partridge first published Shakespeare's Bawdy, a 200-page glossary of Shakespeare's sexual and 'bawdy' terms used in the plays and poems, and it has been reprinted many times since. In the preface to his work Partridge declares "As I am neither pederast nor pedant, I may be able to throw some light upon a neglected, yet very important, aspect of Shakespeare's character and art" (xi).

Gordon Lester

The Comedy of Eros
Link to Database

Sources:

Partridge, Eric. Shakespeare's Bawdy. London, Ontario: Routledge, 1994.