There cannot, we think, be a stronger proof that 'The Comedy of Errors' was an early play of our author, than its agreement, in this particular, with the models which Shakspere found in his almost immediate predecessors.

2. In 'Love's Labour's Lost,'' Romeo and Juliet,' 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' and 'The Comedy of Errors,' alternate rhymes are very frequently introduced. Shakspere obtained the mastery over this species of verse in the 'Venus and Adonis," "the first heir of his invention," as he himself calls it. He writes it with extraordinary facilitywith an ease and power that strikingly contrast with the more laboured elegiac stanzas of modern times. Nothing can be more harmonious, or the harmony more varied, than this measure in Shakspere's hands. Take, for example, the well-known lines in the 'Venus and Adonis,' which, themselves the most perfect music, have been allied to one of the most successful musical compositions of the present day :—

"Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear,

Or, like a fairy, trip upon the green,
Or, like a nymph, with long dishevell'd hair,
Dance on the sands, and yet no footing

seen."

Antipholus of Syracuse to Luciana, in the
third act of The Comedy of Errors: '-
"Teach me, dear creature, how to think and
speak;

Lay open to my earthy gross conceit,
Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,

The folded meaning of your word's deceit." There was clearly a time in Shakspere's poetical life when he delighted in this species of versification; and, in many of the instances in which he has employed it in the dramas we have mentioned, the passages have somewhat of a fragmentary appearance, as if they were not originally cast in a dramatic mould, but were amongst those scattered thoughts of the young poet which had shaped themselves into verse, without a purpose beyond that of embodying his feeling of the beautiful and the harmonious. When the time arrived that he had fully dedicated himself to the great work of his life, he rarely ventured upon cultivating these offshoots of his early versification. The doggrel was entirely rejected; the alternate rhymes no longer tempted him by their music to introduce a measure which is scarcely akin with the dramatic spirit; the couplet was adopted more and more sparingly; and he finally adheres to the

Compare these with the following in 'Love's blank verse which he may almost be said Labour 's Lost:'

"A wither'd hermit, five-score winters worn,
Might shake off fifty, looking in her eye:
Beauty doth varnish age, as if new born,
And gives the crutch the cradle's infancy."
Or with these, in 'Romeo and Juliet:'—
"If I profane with my unworthiest hand

This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,—
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand,
To smooth that rough touch with a tender

kiss."

to have created,-in his hands certainly the grandest as well as the sweetest form in which the highest thoughts were ever unfolded to listening humanity.

The commentators have puzzled themselves, after their usual fashion, with the evidence which this play undoubtedly presents of Shakspere's ability to read Latin, and their dogged resolution to maintain the opinion that in an age of grammar-schools our poet never could have attained that common accomplishment. The speech of

Or with some of the lines in A Midsummer Egeon, in the first scene,—
Night's Dream,' such as-

"Why should you think that I should woo in

scorn?

Scorn and derision never come in tears: Look, when I vow, I weep; and vows so born, In their nativity all truth appears."

Or, lastly, with the exquisite address of

"A heavier task could not have been imposed
Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable,"—
is, they admit, an imitation of the
"Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem'
of Virgil.

"Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine,"

6

who was capable of reading the 'Menæchmi' without the help of a translation." Malone entirely disagrees with Ritson's theory that this comedy was much indebted to an earlier production; but sets up a theory of his own to get over the difficulty started by Ritson, that not a single name, word, or line is taken from Warner's translation: a play called The Historie of Error' was enacted before Queen Elizabeth, “by the children of Powles," in 1576; and from this piece, says Malone, "it is extremely probable that he was furnished with the fable of the present comedy," as well as the designation of “surreptus." Here is, unquestionably, a very early play of Shakspere,-and yet Steevens maintains that it was taken from a translation of Plautus, published in 1595; the play has no resemblance, beyond the general character of the incidents, to this translation, and therefore Ritson pronounces that it is not entirely Shakspere's work ;—and, while Malone denies this, he guesses that The Comedy of Errors' was founded upon a much older play. And why all this contradictory hypothesis? Simply because these most learned men are resolved to hold their own heads higher than Shakspere, by maintaining that he could not do what they could-read Plautus in the original. We have not a doubt that The Comedy of Errors' was written at least five years before the publication of Warner's translation of 'The Menæchmi;' and, further, that Shakspere, in the composition of his own play, was perfectly familiar with "The Menæchmi' of Plautus. In Hamlet he gives, in a word, the characteristics of two ancient dramatists;

is in Catullus, Ovid, and Horace. The "owls" | but proceeded from some inferior playwright, that "suck our breath" are the "striges" of Ovid. The apostrophe of Dromio to the virtues of "beating"-" When I am cold he heats me with beating; when I am warm he cools me with beating; I am waked with it when I sleep; raised with it when I sit; driven out of doors with it when I go from home; welcomed home with it when I return is modelled upon Cicero:-" Hæc studia adolescentiam agunt, senectutem oblectant, secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium præbent, delectant domi, non impediunt foris, pernoctant nobiscum, peregrinantur, rusticantur." The burning of the conjuror's beard is an incident copied from the twelfth book of Virgil's 'Eneid,' where Corinæus singes "the goodly bush of hair" of Ebusus, in a manner scarcely consistent with the dignity of heroic poetry. Lastly, in the original copy of 'The Comedy of Errors,' the Antipholus of Ephesus is called Sereptus-a corruption of the epithet by which one of the twin brothers in Plautus is distinguished Menæchmus Surreptus. There was a translation of this comedy of Plautus, to which we shall presently more fully advert. "If the poet had not dipped into the original Plautus," says Capell, "Sur reptus had never stood in his copy, the translation having no such agnomen, but calling one brother simply Menæchmus, the other Sosicles." With all these admissions on the part of some of those who proclaimed that Farmer had made a wonderful discovery when he attempted to prove that Shakspere did not know the difference between clarus and carus, they will not swerve from their belief that his mind was so constituted as to be incapable of attaining that species of his criticism is decisive as to his familiarity knowledge which was of the easiest attain- with the originals: "Seneca cannot be too ment in his own day, and for the teaching heavy, nor Plautus too light." We shall furof which a school was expressly endowed at nish a few extracts from this translation of Stratford-upon-Avon. Steevens says, "Shak- 1595; whence it will be seen, incidentally, speare might have taken the general plan of that the lightness of the free and natural this comedy from a translation of The old Roman is wondrously loaded by the proMenæchmi' of Plautus, by W. W., i. e. (ac-saic hand of Master William Warner. cording to Wood) William Warner, in 1595." Ritson thinks that Shakspere was under no obligation to this translation; but that 'The Comedy of Errors' "was not originally his,

The original argument of 'The Menæchmi,' it will be perceived, at once gave Shakspere the epithet surreptus, as well as furnished him with some of the characters of his play,

much more distinctly than the translation, which we present with it :—

[PLAUTUS.]

"Mercator Siculus, cui erant gemini filii;
Ei, surrepto altero, mors obtigit.
Nomen surreptitii illi indit qui domi est
Avus paternus, facit Menæchmum Sosiclem.
Et is germanum, postquam adolevit, quæritat
Circum omnes oras. Post Epidamnum de-

venit:

Hic fuerat auctus ille surreptitius.
Menæchmum civem credunt omnes advenam:
Eumque appellant, meretrix, uxor et socer.
li se cognoscunt fratres postremò invicem."

[WARNER.]

Two twinborn sons a Sicill merchant had,
Menechmus one, and Sosicles the other:
The first his father lost a little lad,
The grandsire named the latter like his
brother.

This (grown a man) long travel took to seek
His brother, and to Epidamnum came,
Where th' other dwelt enrich'd, and him so
like,

That citizens there take him for the same:
Father, wife, neighbours, each mistaking
either,

'The Menæchmi' opens with the favourite character of the Roman comedy-the Parasite; the scene is at Epidamnum. The Parasite is going to dine with Menæchmus, who comes out from his house, upbraiding his jealous wife. But his wife is not jealous without provocation :

"Hanc modo uxori intus palam surripui; ad scortum fero."

The Antipholus of Shakspere does not propose to dine with one "pretty and wild," and to bestow "the chain" upon his hostess, till he has been provoked by having his own doors shut upon him. Our poet has thus preserved some sympathy for his Antipholus, which the Menæchmus of Plautus forfeits upon his first entrance. Menæchmus and the Parasite go to dine with Erotium (meretrix). Those who talk of Shakspere's anachronisms have never pointed out to us what formidable liberties the translators of Shakspere's time did not scruple to take with their originals. Menæchmus gives very precise directions for his dinner, after the most approved Roman fashion :

"Jube igitur nobis tribus apud te prandium accurarier,

Atque aliquid scitamentorum de foro obsonarier,

Much pleasant error, ere they meet together." This argument is almost sufficient to point out the difference between the plots of Plautus and of Shakspere. It stands in the place of the beautiful narrative of Egeon; in the first scene of 'The Comedy of Errors.' In Plautus we have no broken-hearted father bereft of both his sons: he is dead; and the grandfather changes the name of the one child who remains to him. Shakspere does not stop to tell us how the twin-brothers bear the same name; nor does he explain the matter any more in the case of the Dromios, whose introduction upon the scene is his own creation. In Plautus, the brother, Menæchmus Sosicles, who remained with the grandsire, comes to Epidamnum in search of This passage W. W. thus interprets :-" Let his twin-brother who was stolen, and he is a good dinner be made for us three. Hark accompanied by his servant Messenio; but ye, some oysters, a mary-bone pie or two, all the perplexities that are so naturally some artichokes, and potato-roots; let our occasioned by the confusion of the two twin- other dishes be as you please." In reading servants are entirely wanting. The mistakes this bald attempt to transfuse the Roman are carried on by the "meretrix, uxor, et | luxuries into words accommodated to Eng

Glandionidem suillam, laridum pernonidem,

aut

Sinciput, aut polimenta porcina, aut aliquid ad eum modum."

the dyer's; and they fall with their re- | spere's time, did not hesitate to introduce proaches upon the Menæchmus of Epidamnum, who left the courtezan to attend to his business. A scene of violence ensues; and the bewildered man repairs to Erotium for his dinner. He meets with reproaches only; for he knows nothing of the cloak and the chain. The stranger Menæchmus, who has the cloak and chain, encounters the wife of his brother, and of course he utterly denies any knowledge of her. Her father comes to her assistance, upon her hastily sending for him. He first reproaches his daughter for her suspicions of her husband, and her shrewish temper: Luciana reasons in a somewhat similar way with Adriana, in 'The Comedy of Errors ;'-and the Abbess is more earnest in her condemnation of the complaining wife. The scene in Plautus wants all the elevation that we find in Shakspere; and the old man seems to think that the wife has little to grieve for, as long as she has food, clothes, and servants. Menæchmus, the traveller, of course cannot comprehend all this; and the father and daughter agree that he is mad, and send for a doctor. He escapes from the discipline which is preparing for him; and the doctor's assistants lay hold of Menæchmus, the citizen. He is rescued by Messenio, the servant of the traveller, who mistakes him for his master, and begs his freedom. The servant, going to his inn, meets with his real master; and, while disputing with him, the Menæchmus of Epidamnum joins them. Of course, the éclaircissement is the natural consequence of the presence of both upon the same scene. The brothers resolve to leave Epidamnum together; the citizen making proclamation that he will sell all his goods, and adding, with his accustomed loose notions of conjugal duty,

"Venibit uxor quoque etiam, si quis emptor venerit."

Hazlitt has said, "This comedy is taken very much from 'The Menæchmi' of Plautus, and is not an improvement on it." We think he is wrong in both assertions.

We have noticed some of the anachronisms which the translator of Plautus, in Shak

into his performance. W. W. did not do this ignorantly; for he was a learned person; and, we are told in an address of 'The Printer to his Readers,' had "divers of this poet's comedies Englished, for the use and delight of his private friends, who in Plautus' own words are not able to understand them." There was, no doubt, a complete agreement as to the principle of such anachronisms in the writers of Shakspere's day. They employed the conventional ideas of their own time, instead of those which properly belonged to the date of their story; they translated images as well as words; they were addressing uncritical readers and spectators, and they thought it necessary to make themselves intelligible by speaking of familiar instead of recondite things. Thus W. W. not only gives us mary-bone pies and potatoes, instead of the complicated messes of the Roman sensualist, but he talks of constables and toll-gatherers, Bedlam fools and claret. In Douce's 'Essay on the Anachronisms and some other Incongruities of Shakspere,' the offences of our poet in 'The Comedy of Errors' are thus summed up:— "In the ancient city of Ephesus we have ducats, marks, and guilders, and the Abbess of a Nunnery. Mention is also made of several modern European kingdoms and of America; of Henry the Fourth of France*, of Turkish tapestry, a rapier, and a striking clock; of Lapland sorcerers, Satan, and even of Adam and Noah. In one place Antipholus calls himself a Christian. As we are unacquainted with the immediate source whence this play was derived, it is impossible to ascertain whether Shakspere is responsible for these anachronisms." The ducats, marks, guilders, tapestry, rapier, striking-clock, and Lapland sorcerers belong precisely to the same class of anachronisms as those we have already exhibited from the pen of the translator of Plautus. Had Shakspere used the names of Grecian or Roman coins, his audience would not have understood him. Such matters have nothing whatever to do with the period of a dramatic action. But we

*Mention is certainly not made of Henry IV.; there is a supposed allusion to him.