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Teachers & SchoolsRules and Order
Law and order frame the action of the play. Rather than be the foundation for what happens in the play, law and order are significant because of their impotence. The play is about forces greater than law – family, identity, isolation and more are outside the bounds of what’s traditionally dealt with by the law. Law is present, but it is relatively powerless in the face of all the confusion of the play. The law can’t keep marriages together, or reunite families, and as those are the areas where justice needs to be served, the law is inapplicable, though it is present as a powerless force.
Law and order in Ephesus are notable for their impotence.
There is order in Ephesus, it just has nothing to do with the law. All the characters have their own way of ordering the world, and these individual rubrics aren’t codified.