DRO. E. Ay, sir, but I am sure I do not; and whatsoever a man denies, you are now bound to believe him.

EGE. Not know my voice? Oh, Time's ex-
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

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

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.
ADR. 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.

с

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.

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.

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

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.]

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

ABB. Renowned duke, vouchsafe to take the pains

To 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, EGEON, 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:

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

Come, go with us; we'll look to that anon; Embrace thy brother there; rejoice with him. [Exeunt ANTIPHOLUS S. and E., Adr. and Luc.

DRO. S. There is a fat friend at your master's house,

That kitchen'd me for you to-day at dinner;
She now shall be my sister,-not my wife.

DRO. E. Methinks you are my glass, and not my brother:

I see by you, I am a sweet-fac'd youth,

Will you walk in to see their gossiping?
DRO. S. Not I, sir; you are my elder.
DRO. E. That's a question: how shall we try it?
DRO. S. We'll draw cuts for the senior; till
then, lead thou first.

DRO. E. Nay, then, thus;

We came into the world like brother and brother;

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

(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

66

attribute the cross-purposes of the scene to supernatural agency, and see no inconsistency in his wooing Luciana as an enchantress :

"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 once 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 n 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

nonce.

(2) SCENE II.-He gains by death, that hath such means to die.] The allusion is obviously to the long current opinion that the syren, or mermaid, decoyed mortals to destruction by the witchery of her songs. This superstition has been charmingly illustrated by Leyden, in his poem, "The Mermaid," (vide Scott's "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," vol. iv. p. 294.)

"Thus, all to soothe the Chieftain's woe,
Far from the maid he loved so dear,
The song arose, so soft and slow,
He seem'd her parting sigh to hear.

That sea-maid's form, of pearly light, Was whiter than the downy spray, And round her bosom, heaving bright, Her glossy, yellow ringlets play.

(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.

(1) SCENE II.-A devil in an everlasting garment hath nim.] A sergeant's buff leather garment was called durance; partly, it would appear, on account of its everlasting qualities, and partly from a quibble on the occupation of the wearer, which was that of arresting and clapping men in durance. In Greene's " Quip for an Upstart Courtier," sig. D, 3d edit. 1620, there is a graphic description of a sergeant, or sheriff's officer. "One of them had on a buffe-leather jerkin, all greasie before with the droppings of beere, that fell from his beard, and by his side, a skeine like a brewer's bung knife; and muffled he was in a cloke, turn'd over his nose, as though hee had beene ashamed to showe his face."

This peculiar garb is again referred to by our author in a passage of " Henry IV." Part I. Act I. Sc. 2,

"And is not a buff jerkin a most sweet robe of durance?" the point of which seems not to have been fully understood by the commentators. A robe of durance was a cant term, implying imprisonment; and the Prince, after dilating on purse-stealing, humorously calls attention to its probable consequences, by his query about the buff jerkin. See MIDDLETON'S "Blurt, Master Constable," Act III. Sc. 2:

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

(2) SCENE II.-A hound that runs counter, and yet draws dry foot well.] To run counter is to follow on a false scent; to draw dry foot means to track by the mere scent of the foot. A hound that does one is not likely to do the other; but the ambiguity is explained by the double meaning attached to the words counter and dry foot. The former implying both false, and a prison, and the latter, privation of scent, and lack of means. The sheriff'sofficer, as he tracks for a prison, may be said to run counter, and, as he follows those who have expended their substance, he draws dry foot.

(3) SCENE II.-One that, before the judgment, carries poor souls to hell.] By before the judgment, in its secondary sense, Dromio is supposed to allude to arrest on mesneprocess. Hell was a cant term for the worst dungeon in the wretched prisons of the time. There was the Master's Side, the Knight's Ward, the Hole, and last and most deplorable, the department called Hell, which was the receptacle for those who had no means to pay the extortionate fines exacted for better accommodation.

(4) SCENE III.-He that sets up his rest to do more exploits with his mace 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 Hence gaming, and means staking his all upon an event.

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 fifty, 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 wilderness; and Job mourned forty days. In Hindustani, the word chalis, forty, has the same indefinite acceptation; chalis-sutun, denoting literally forty columns, being applied to a palace with a number of pillars. So also in Persia, chihal 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-pa, "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."

(1) SCENE I.-At your important letters, &c.] "Shakspeare, who gives to all nations the customs of his own, seems from this passage to allude to a court of wards in Ephesus. The court of wards was always considered as a grievous oppression. It is glanced at as early as in the old morality of Hycke Scorner:

these ryche men ben unkinde:
Wydowes do curse lordes and gentyllmen,

For they contrayne them to marry with their men;
Ye, wheder they wyll or no.""-STEEVENS.

"In the passage before us, Shakspeare was thinking particularly on the interest which the king had in England in the marriage of his wards, who were the heirs of his tenants holding by knight's service, or in capité, and were under age; an interest which Queen Elizabeth in Shakspeare's time exerted on all occasions, as did her successors, till the abolition of the Court of Wards and Liveries; the poet attributes to the duke the same right to choose a wife or a husband for his wards at Ephesus.". MALONE.