Duke Solinus

Solinus opens the play caught between statute and sympathy: the trade war with Syracuse condemns Aegeon to die unless a thousand marks appear, and the Duke knows the man's whole estate cannot reach a hundred. He refuses to bend the law — I am not partial to infringe our laws — but he grants Aegeon the day to tell his story, a mercy that becomes the play's frame. His authority hovers over Ephesus as the confusion escalates, and his final role as the arbiter who must sort out the arrested, the mad, and the identical is prepared from his very first scene.