tremity!

Hast thou so crack'd and splitted my poor tongue,
In seven short years, that here my only son
Knows not my feeble key of untun'd cares?
Though now this grained face of mine be hid
In sap-consuming winter's drizzled snow,
And all the conduits of my blood froze up;
Yet hath my night of life some memory-
My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left-
My dull deaf ears a little use to hear:
All these old witnesses (I cannot err)
Tell me, thou art my son, Antipholus.

ANT. E. I never saw my father in my life. EGE. But seven years since, in Syracusa, boy, Thou know'st we parted; but, perhaps, my son, Thou sham'st to acknowledge me in misery.

ANT. E. The duke, and all that know me in
the city,

Can witness with me that it is not so;
I ne'er saw Syracusa in my life.

DUKE. I tell thee, Syracusian, twenty years

You are now bound, &c.] Of course, a quibble on poor Egeon's bonds.

Have I been patron to Antipholus,
During which time he ne'er saw Syracusa.
I see, thy age and dangers make thee dote.

Enter the Abbess, with ANTIPHOLUS of Syracuse, and DROMIO of Syracuse.

ABB. Most mighty duke, behold a man much wrong'd. [All gather to see them. ADR. I see two husbands, or mine eyes de

ceive me.

DUKE. One of these men is Genius to the other; And so of these, which is the natural man, And which the spirit? Who deciphers them? DRO. S. I, sir, am Dromio; command him

away.

DRO. E. I, sir, am Dromio, pray let me stay. ANT. S. Egeon, art thou not? or else his ghost!

DRO. S. Oh, my old master! who hath bound

him here?

ABB. Whoever bound him, I will loose his bonds, And gain a husband by his liberty! Speak, old Ægeon, if thou be'st the man That hadst a wife once call'd Emilia, That bore thee at a burden two fair sons 18! Oh, if thou be'st the same Egeon, speak!

And speak unto the same Emilia!

EGE. If I dream not, thou art Æmilia!
If thou art she, tell me, where is that son
That floated with thee on the fatal raft?

ABB. By men of Epidamnum he and I,
And the twin Dromio, all were taken up.
But, by and by, rude fishermen of Corinth,
By force, took Dromio and my son from them,
And me they left with those of Epidamnum.
What then became of them I cannot tell;
I, to this fortune that you see me in.

DUKE. Why, here begins his morning story right;

These two Antipholus',-these two so like,
And these two Dromios, one in semblance ;
Besides her urging of her wreck at sea:
These are the parents to these children,
Which accidentally are met together.
Antipholus, thou cam'st from Corinth first.

b

ANT. S. No, sir, not I; I came from Syracuse. DUKE. Stay, stand apart; I know not which is which.

ANT. E. I came from Corinth, my most gracious lord.

DRO. E. And I with him.

ANT. E. Brought to this town by that most famous warrior,

Duke Menaphon, your most renowned uncle.
ADE. Which of you two did dine with me
to-day?

ANT. S. I, gentle mistress.
ADR.

And are not you my husband?
ANT. E. No; I say nay to that.
ANT. S. And so do I; yet did she call me so:
And this fair gentlewoman, her sister here,
Did call me brother. What I told you then,
I hope I shall have leisure to make good;
If this be not a dream I see and hear.

ANG. That is the chain, sir, which you had of me.

ANT. S. I think it be, sir; I deny it not.

ANT. E. And you, sir, for this chain arrested

me.

ANG. I think I did, sir; I deny it not.

ADR. I sent you money, sir, to be your bail, By Dromio; but I think he brought it not. DRO. E. No; none by me.

ANT. S. This purse of ducats I receiv'd from

you,

And Dromio, my man, did bring them me:
I see, we still did meet each other's man,
And I was ta'en for him and he for me,
And thereupon these Errors rare arose.
ANT. E. These ducats pawn I for my father
here.

To

d

DUKE. It shall not need,-thy father hath his life.

COUR. Sir, I must have that diamond from

you.

ANT. E. There, take it, and much thanks for my good cheer.

ABB. Renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the

pains

go with us into the abbey here,
And hear at large discoursed all our fortunes;
And all that are assembled in this place,
That, by this sympathized one day's error,
Have suffer'd wrong, go, keep us company,
And we shall make full satisfaction.
Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail
Of you, my sons; and, till this present hour,
My heavy burden ne'er delivered.

The duke, my husband, and my children both,
And you the calendars of their nativity,
Go to a gossip's feast, and go with me;'
After so long grief, such festivity!

DUKE. With all my heart, I'll gossip at this
feast.

[Exeunt DUKE, Abbess, ÆGEON, Courtezan, Merchant, ANGELO, and Attendants. DRO. S. Master, shall I fetch your stuff from ship-board?

ANT. E. Dromio, what stuff of mine hast thou embark'd?

DRO. S. Your goods, that lay at host, sir, in the Centaur.

ANT. S. He speaks to me; I am your master, Dromio:

盡 If I dream not,-] In the folio, 1623, this speech of Ægeon, and the subsequent one of the Abbess, are misplaced, and come after the Duke's speech, commencing," Why, here begins," &c. Malone made the necessary transposition.

To these children,-] Children must be pronounced as a trisyllable.

e What I told you then, &c.] This, and the two lines following, are addressed to Luciana, and should perhaps be spoken aside to her.

These Errors rare arose.] The ancient copy has errors are, and this incontestable misprint is faithfully followed by modern editors. Mr. Collier's old corrector endeavours, not very successfully, to rectify it by reading all for are. I venture to substitute rare, which, besides being closer to the original, appears to give a better meaning.

Twenty-five years have I but gone in travail
Of you, my sons; and, till this present hour,
My heavy burden ne'er delivered.]

"After so long grief, such nativity," which can hardly be right, "such nativity," that is, equal, or proportionate nativity, being without sense here. Johnson proThe posed festivity, which is most likely what the poet wrote. compositor seems to have caught nativity from the line just above. I believe, however, this word is not the only corruption in the passage.

(1) SCENE II.-They say this town is full of cozenage, &c.] This was the character attributed to Ephesus in remote ages. Steevens suggests that Shakespeare might have got the hint for this description from Warner's translation of the "Menæchmi," 1595. "For this assure yourselfe, this Towne Epidamnum is a place of outragious expences, exceeding in all ryot and lasciviousnesse: and (I heare) as full of Ribaulds, Parasites, Drunkards, Catchpoles, Cony-catchers, and Sycophants, as it can hold," &c. But it is observable that Shakespeare, with great propriety, makes Antipholus attach to the Ephesians higher and more poetical qualities of cozenage than those enumerated by the old translator. It is not merely as "catchpoles," "cony-catchers," and the like, but as "darkworking sorcerers," and "soul-killing witches," that he speaks of them. And hence we are prepared to find him

"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 words' deceit.
Against my soul's pure truth, why labour you
To make it wander in an unknown field?"

Or in his imagining that, to win the sibyl, he must lose himself:

"Sing, syren, for thyself, and I will dote:

Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a bride I'll take thee, and there lie;
And, in that glorious supposition, think

He gains by death, that hath such means to die !"

(1) SCENE I.-Once this.] The following note in Gifford's "Ben Jonson" (vol. iii. p. 218) helps to confirm our opinion that onte in this place, and in many other instances, is only another form of nonce, and means for the occasion, for the time being, &c. "For the nonce, is simply for the once, for the one thing in question, whatever it may be. This is invariably its meaning. The aptitude of many of our monosyllables beginning with a vowel to assume the is well known; but the progress of this expression is distinctly marked in our early writers, 'a ones," 'an anes,' 'for the anes,' for the nanes,' 'for the nones,' 'for the

Borne on a foamy-crested wave,

She reach'd amain the bounding prow,
Then clasping fast the Chieftain brave,
She, plunging, sought the deep below."

The reader desirous of particular information concerning the supposed existence and habits of these seductive beings, may consult Maillet's "Telliamed," Pontopiddan's "Natural History of Norway," and Waldron's "Account of the Isle of Man."

(3) SCENE II.—

ANT. S. Where France?

DRO. S. In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her heir.]

As Theobald first observed, an equivoque was, no doubt, intended between the words hair and heir; and by the latter, was meant Henry IV. the heir of France, concerning whose succession to the throne there was a civil war in the country from 1589 for several years. Henry, after struggling long against the League, extricated himself from all his difficulties by embracing the Roman Catholic religion at St. Denis, on Sunday, the 25th of July, 1593, and was crowned King of France in February, 1594. In 1591, Lord Essex was dispatched with 4,000 troops to the French king's assistance, and his brother Walter was killed before Rouen, in Normandy. From that time till Henry was peaceably settled on the throne, many bodies of troops were sent by Queen Elizabeth to his aid so that his situation must at that period have been a matter of notoriety, and a subject of conversation in England. From the reference to this circumstance, Malone imagines the " Comedy of Errors" to have been written

before 1594.

-4 8-1 is sa morissting perment hath leather parent was called dare; ang galties,

Le in the secpation of the wearer, tons of Arresting and clapping men in durance. at Opstart Courtier." sig. D, 31 ོ scrtice of a sergeant, or One of them had on a brife-leather wroz & race befire with the droppings of beere, that as beari, and by his sile, a skene like a brew's bang hid he was in a coke, turn'd

bose, as though bee had beene ashamed to showe

This peenarrab is an referred to by our author in pass of Henry IV." Part L. Act L. Se. 2,—

“And is not a baƒ jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?" the point of which seems not to have been fully understood by the commentators. A robe of duray was a cant term implying imprisonment; and the Prince, after La purse-staing, humorously calls attention to 128 proosbie oonstones, by his query about the bu See MIDDLETON'S " Bart, Master Constable," Act 1. Se4

Tell my lady, that I go in a suit of durance."

2 Sory IL-4 krand that was counter, and yet das dry foot well] To run counter is to follow on a ce scent; to draw dry foot means to track by the mere seat of the fot A bound that does one is not likely to do the other; but the ambiguity is explained by the deable meaning attached to the words counter and dry foot. The former implying both false, and a prison, and the latter, privation of soyat, and last of means. The sheriff'safer, as he tracks for a prison, may be said to run em, and, as he follows those who have expended their sistance, he draws dry foot.

3) Serve II.—Ove that, Mf the judgment, carries pon anals no hell.] By Agrare the indent, in its secondary s Premio is supposed to allude to arrest on mesneHe was a cant term for the worst dungeon in the wretched prisons of the time. There was the Master's Side, 450 & 6zicsiland, the Hole, and last and most deplorable, the department called Hel, which was the receptacle for those who had no means to pay the extortionate fines exted for better accommodation.

(4) Sorsg UL.--He that sets up his rest to do more expins weed der way than a morris-pike.] Dromio plays

on the word rest, arrest, and a metaphor, very common in our old writers, setting up his rest, which is taken from gaming, and means staking his all upon an event. Hence it was frequently applied to express fixed determination, steadfast purpose. Thus, in "All's Well that Ends Well," Act II. Sc. 1:—

"What I can do, can do no hurt to try,

Since you set up your rest 'gainst remedy." The Morris-pike is often mentioned by old writers. It was the Moorish pike, and was constantly used both in land and sea warfare, during the sixteenth century.

(5) SCENE III-A ring he hath of mine worth forty ducats.] The number forty was very anciently adopted to express a great many, in the same way that we now use fty, or a score. In the Scriptures it is recorded that the flood was forty days on the earth; the Israelites were forty years, and our Saviour forty days in the wilder ness; and Job mourned forty days. In Hindustani, the word chalis, forty, has the same indefinite acceptation; chalis-sutun, denoting literally forty columns, being ap plied to a palace with a number of pillars. So also in Persia, chikal signifies forty, and Persepolis, because it is a city of many towers, is called chihal-minar, “the forty towers." In like manner, too, the insect which we name centipede, is there known as chihal-pd, “forty feet." The word in this sense is not at all uncommon among old English writers ;

"Quoth Niceness to Newfangle, thou art such a Jacke, That thou devisest fortie fashions for my ladie's backe." The Cobler's Prophecy, 1594. And it is so used repeatedly by Shakespeare; for example,

"I have learned these forty years."

"I will have forty moys."

Richard II. Act I. Sc. 3.

Henry V. Act IV. Sc. 4. Henry VI. Part I. Act I. Sc. 3.

"I myself fight not once in forty years."

(1) Soxy® L. At your important letters, doc.] Shakam, who gives to all nations the customs of her own, soms them this passage to allude to a court of asa var in Aychowaw The coat of wards was always conanders as a grievous oppression. It is glanood at as early as i cào old morality of Hycke Scorner:

these che men ben unkinde:
Wysłowes do curse londes and gentyllmen,

Now Play www.brapezikom to marry with their men ;
Te wheder they wyll or no "”—STEEVENS.