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CHAPTER II.

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS.

THE Comedy of Errors' was clearly one of Shakspere's very early plays. It was probably untouched by its author after its first production. We have here no existing sketch to enable us to trace what he introduced, and what he corrected, in the maturity of his judgment. It was, we imagine, one of the pieces for which he would manifest little solicitude after his genius was fully developed. The play is amongst those mentioned by Meres in 1598. The only allusion in it which can be taken to fix a date is one which is supposed to refer to the civil contests of France upon the accession of Henry IV.

We must depend, then, upon the internal evidence of this being a very early play. This evidence consists,

1. In the great prevalence of that measure which was known to our language as early as the time of Chaucer by the name of "rime dogerel." This peculiarity is found only in three of our author's plays,-in 'Love's Labour's Lost,' in 'The Taming of the Shrew,' and in 'The Comedy of Errors.' But this measure was a distinguishing characteristic of the early English drama. It prevails very much more in this play than in 'Love's Labour's Lost:' for prose is here much more sparingly introduced. The doggrel seems to stand half-way between prose and verse, marking the distinction between the language of a work of art and that of ordinary life, in the same way that the recitative does in a musical composition. It is to be observed, too, in 'The Comedy of Errors,' that this measure is very carefully regulated by somewhat strict laws:

"We came into the world like brother and brother,

And now let's go hand in hand, not one before another."

This concluding passage, which is cast in the same mould as the other similar verses of the play, is much more regular in its

structure than the following in 'Love's Labour's Lost:'

"And such barren plants are set before us, that we thankful should be,

Which we of taste and feeling are, for those

parts that do fructify in us more than he." The latter line almost reminds us of 'Mrs. Harris's Petition,' which, according to Swift, "Humbly sheweth

"That I went to warm myself in Lady Betty's chamber, because I was cold,

And I had in a purse seven pounds four shil

lings and sixpence, besides farthings, in

money and gold."

The measure in 'The Comedy of Errors' was formed by Shakspere upon his rude predecessors. In some of these it is not only occasionally introduced, but constitutes the great mass of the dialogue. In Gammer Gurton's Needle,' for example, the doggrel measure prevails throughout, as in the concluding lines:

"But now, my good masters, since we must be gone,

And leave you behind us, here all alone, Since at our lasting ending thus merry we be, For Gammer Gurton's Needle's sake, let us

have a plaudytie."

The comedy of Ralph Roister Doister' is composed in the same measure. Nor was it in humorous performances alone that this structure of verse (which Shakspere always uses as a vehicle of fun) was introduced. In 'Damon and Pithias,' a serious play, which was probably produced about 1570, the sentence of Dionysius is thus pronounced upon

Pithias:

"Pithias, seeing thou takest me at my word,

take Damon to thee:

For two months he is thine; unbind him; I set him free;

Which time once expired, if he appear not the next day by noon,

Without further delay thou shalt lose thy life, and that full soon."

There cannot, we think, be a stronger proof | Antipholus of Syracuse to Luciana, in the that The Comedy of Errors' was an early third act of 'The Comedy of Errors: 'play of our author, than its agreement, "Teach me, dear creature, how to think and in this particular, with the models which speak; 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 facility with 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 car,

:

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."

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 i 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

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'Infandum, Regina, jubes renovare dolorem" of Virgil.

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

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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;

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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, "Surreptus 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 knowledge which was of the easiest attainment in his own day, and for the teaching of which a school was expressly endowed at Stratford-upon-Avon. Steevens says, "Shakspeare might have taken the general plan of this comedy from a translation of The Menæchmi' 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,

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his criticism is decisive as to his familiarity with the originals: "Seneca cannot be too heavy, nor Plautus too light." We shall furnish a few extracts from this translation of 1595; whence it will be seen, incidentally, that the lightness of the free and natural old Roman is wondrously loaded by the pro

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,

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"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,

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 his twin-brother who was stolen, and he is accompanied by his servant Messenio; but all the perplexities that are so naturally occasioned by the confusion of the two twinservants are entirely wanting. The mistakes are carried on by the "meretrix, uxor, et

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socer (softened by Warner into "father. ! wife, neighbours "). We have "Medicus," the prototype of Dr. Pinch; but the mother of the twins is not found in Plautus. We scarcely need say that the Parasite and the Father-in-law have no place in Shakspere's comedy. The scene in The Comedy of Errors' is changed from Epidamnum to Ephesus; but we have mention of Epidamnum once or twice in the play.

'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 :

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

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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,

Glandionidem suillam, laridum pernonidem,

aut

Sinciput, aut polimenta porcina, aut aliquid

ad cum modum." ļ This passage W. W. thus interprets: Let a good dinner be made for us three. Hark ye, some oysters, a mary-bone pie or two, some artichokes, and potato-roots; let our other dishes be as you please." In reading this bald attempt to transfuse the Roman luxuries into words accommodated to Eng

lish ideas, we are forcibly reminded how rare Ben" dealt with the spirit of antiquity

in such matters :

"The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels' heels,

Boil'd in the spirit of sol, and dissolved pearl,
Apicius' diet 'gainst the epilepsy: *
And I will eat these broths with spoons of
amber,

Headed with diamond and carbuncle.

My footboy shall eat pheasants, calver'd sal

mons,

Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have
The beards of barbels served, instead of salads;
Oil'd mushrooms," &c.

Alchymist, Act II., Scene 1.

The second act in Plautus opens with the landing of Menæchmus Sosicles and Messenio at Epidamnum. The following is Warner's translation of the scene:

"Men. Surely, Messenio, I think seafarers never take so comfortable a joy in anything as, when they have been long tossed and turmoiled in the wide scas, they hap at last to ken land.

Mes. I'll be sworn, I should not be gladder to see a whole country of mine own than I have

been at such a sight. But, I pray, wherefore are we now come to Epidamnum? must we needs go to see every town that we hear of?

Men. Till I find my brother, all towns are alike to me: I must try in all places.

Mes. Why then, let 's even as long as we live seek your brother: six years now have we roamed about thus-Istria, Hispania, Massylia, Illyria, all the upper sca, all high Greece, all haven-towns in Italy. I think if we had sought a needle all this time we must needs have found it, had it been above ground. It cannot be that he is alive; and to seek a dead man thus among the living, what folly is it!

Men. Yea, could I but once find any man that could certainly inform me of his death, I were satisfied; otherwise I can never desist seeking little knowest thou, Messenio, how near my heart it goes.

Mes. This is washing of a blackamoor. Faith, let's go home, unless ye mean we should write a story of our travel.

Men. Sirrah, no more of these saucy speeches. I perceive I must teach you how to serve me, not to rule me.

Mes. Ay, so; now it appears what it is to be

a servant. Well, I must speak my conscience. Do ye hear, sir? Faith I must tell you one thing: when I look into the lean estate of your purse, and consider advisedly of your decaying stock, I hold it very needful to be drawing homeward, lest in looking your brother we quite lose ourselves. For this assure yourself, this town, Epidamnum, is a place of outrageous expenses, exceeding in all riot and lasciviousness; and, I hear, as full of ribalds, parasites, drunkards, catchpoles, coney-catchers, and sycophants, as it can hold. Then for courtezans, why here's the currentest stamp of them in the world. You must not think here to scape with as light cost as in other places. The very name shows the nature; no man comes hither sine damno.

Men. You say very well indeed: give me my purse into mine own keeping, because I will so be the safer, sine damno."

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Steevens considered that the description of Ephesus in 'The Comedy of Errors,'-"They say this town is full of cozenage," &c.— was derived from Warner's translation, where "ribalds, parasites, drunkards, catchpoles, coney-catchers, sycophants, and courtezans," are found; the voluptarii, potatores, sycophanta, palpatores, and meretrices of Plautus. But surely the "jugglers," sorcerers," "witches," of Shakspere are not these. With his exquisite judgment, he gave Ephesus more characteristic "liberties of sin." The cook of the courtezan in Plautus first mistakes the wandering brother for the profligate of Epidamnum. Erotium next encounters him, and with her he dines; and, leaving her, takes charge of a cloak, which the Menæchmus of Epidamnum had given her. In The Comedy of Errors' the stranger brother dines with the wife of him of Ephesus. The Parasite next meets with the wanderer, and, being enraged that the dinner is finished in his absence, resolves to disclose the infidelities of Menæchmus to his jealous wife. The "errors" proceed, in the maid of Erotium bringing him a chain which she says he had

stolen from his wife: he is to cause it to be made heavier and of a newer fashion. The traveller goes his way with the cloak and the chain. The jealous wife and the Parasite lie in wait for the faithless husband, who, the Parasite reports, is carrying the cloak to

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