of twin-brothers on the stage,-Valentine puts a mark on the hat of his master, Menæchmus, and says that will serve as a beacon :

"Pour ne nous plus tromper regardons ce signal

Il doit, dans l'embarras, nous servir de fanal."

The slaves present a repetition, not only of the likeness that exists between their masters, but also of their sentiments and actions, to which they form a sort of parody. This species of symmetry appears to have been a favourite with Shakespeare in his youthful days, rather than in his maturity; it is not of frequent occurrence in his works as it is in those of Molière, where the passion of Cleanthis for Mercury forms a burlesque counterpart to Jupiter's love for Alcmena; and where Covielle and Nicole, Gros-René and Marinette, are caricatures of the lovers in the "Bourgeois Gentilhomme," and the "Dépit Amoureux." Every French critic has drawn attention to the similarity of the scene in which the cook, wife to Dromio of Ephesus, thrusts her importunate affections upon Dromio of Syracuse, whom she takes to be her husband, to the scene between Cleanthis and Mercury in "Amphitryon;" and it is also noticeable that Shakespeare's scene is not acted but narrated, and is none the less vivid for it: just as in the "Taming of the Shrew," the account given of "such a mad marriage as never was before" is brim-full of animation and life, and poetically speaking, is worth a hundred times more than the actual sight of the thing. The peculiar excellence of dramatic talent consists in its power of depicting events and objects in such vivid colours that they can be seen by the mind's eye without the aid of physical sight; and the reproach, made by certain disciples of the romantic school, against classical tragedies and comedies, such as Molière's " Ecole des Femmes," for instance, that the action is sacrificed to the narrative, is based only upon a low and material view of art.

The "Comedy of Errors" not only surpasses the "Menæchmi" in the greater complexity of its plot, its greater variety of incident, but also in its more generous treatment of human nature. Not that elaborately wrought-out characters are to be sought in it; for this, it must be remembered, is Shakespeare's most absolutely comic, and almost farcical play, and in this particular class of work he never handled the incisive tool of an engraver, like Molière, his pencil runs galloping over the canvas with a light fantastic touch; and this play is, moreover, one of his most youthful performances. But already he shows touches of fine discrimination; thus Antipholus of Syracuse is not like his brother, Antipholus of Ephesus, in every point of his character. His is a more delicate nature, and is rendered more interesting by a tinge of melancholy and reverie. In speaking of his slave, he calls him (Act I., Sc. 2)—

"A trusty villain, sir, that very oft

When I am dull with care and melancholy,

Lightens my humour with his merry jokes."

And when the merchant says, as he leaves him, "Sir,
I commend you to your own content," Antipholus
remarks-

"He that commends me to my own content,
Commends me to the thing I cannot get.

I to the world am like a drop of water,

That in the ocean seeks another drop;
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself."

When Antipholus of Syracuse is lead by a series of "errors" into his brother's house, where he sees Luciana, the charming young sister of the wife of Antipholus of Ephesus, he immediately, in the midst of his mystification, feels himself struck by a sudden love for her; the manneristic and romantic style in which he expresses his passion is most assuredly as little antique in tone, as

little like old Plautus, as anything in all of Shakespeare's plays (Act III., Sc. 2):

:

Sweet mistress (what your name is else, I know not,

Nor by what wonder you do hit of mine),

Less, in your knowledge, and your grace, you show not,
Than our earth's wonder; more than earth, divine.
Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;
Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,
Smothered 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?
Are you a god? would you create me new ?
Transform me then, and to your power I'll yield.
But if that I am I, then well I know,

Your weeping sister is no wife of mine,
Nor to her bed no homage do I owe;

Far more, far more, to you do I decline.
O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
To drown me in thy sister flood of tears;
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote:

Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a bed I'll take thee, and there lie;

And in that glorious supposition, think

He gains by death, that hath such means to die :-
Let love, being light, be drowned if she sink!"

His dreamy and impressionable disposition, however, does not prevent him from occasionally beating his slave a little, when he suspects him of mystifying him, but he is not hard or brutal at heart. Even the reprimands he gives to Dromio have in them a touch of poetry, and in forbidding him to jest when he himself is sad he makes use of the fanciful image

"When the sun shines let foolish gnats make sport,

But creep in crannies when he hides his beams."

Antipholus of Ephesus is cast in a commoner mould; he is not, however, devoid of all sense of delicacy and honour, and is far removed from the coarseness of moral fibre shown by the husband in the "Menæchmi," who

begins by purloining his wife's mantle. On the contrary, his first laudable intention is to present his wife with a. gold chain, which he has just bought for her. It is only when, on wishing to enter his house with some of his friends, he finds the door shut against him, and a stranger occupying his place, that he changes the destination of his gift.

"I know a wench of excellent discourse,

Pretty and witty: wild, and yet too, gentle;-
There will we dine: this woman that I mean,
My wife (but, I protest without desert)
Hath oftentimes upbraided me withal;
To her will we to dinner . . .

That chain will I bestow

(Be it for nothing but to spite my wife)
Upon mine hostess there."

Antipholus is greatly exasperated with his wife, not, it must be admitted, without some reason. He even sends to buy a rope's end, which he intends using with good effect "among his wife and her confederates," but as this conjugal quarrel is the result of only a misunderstanding it must inevitably end in a reconciliation. We are quite willing, if necessary, to take his word for it that he in no way deserves the reproaches addressed to him by his wife, whose one fault seems to be an over-jealous love of him, and whose wifely tenderness expresses itself in language of the purest poetry (Act II., Sc. 2)—

"Thou art an elm, my husband; I, a vine,
Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state,
Makes me with thy strength to communicate:
If ought possess thee from me, it is dross;
Usurping ivy, briar, or idle moss.”

Shakespeare draws no sharp contrast therefore between the characters of the two brothers, but simply indicates certain delicate shades of difference, as nature demanded, the physical resemblance of the twins requiring a not too great difference in their moral natures.

But besides the greater intricacy of plot and the fuller handling of his characters, Shakespeare has also enriched his comedy by the addition of a serious element, which is full of a noble and tragic gravity. No art is displayed in the setting forth of the "Menæchmi," which merely begins with a prologue according to classical usage; but the" Comedy of Errors" opens grandly with two majestic forces-the state and paternal love.

Ephesus and Syracuse being at enmity with each other, every Syracusan that sets foot within the rival town is condemned by law to death. An old man from Syracuse has just landed at Ephesus, at the peril of his life, and is brought before the Duke. It is Ægeon, the father of the twin brothers, and in the fine and pathetic speech he makes before the Duke, he relates how years ago, returning home to Syracuse from Epidamnus with his wife and new-born twins, their ship was wrecked in a storm; his wife and one of the babes being taken up by fishermen of Corinth, and he and the other child by a ship from Epidamnus. His remaining son, when eighteen years of age, implored him to let him go in search of his brother :

"Whom whilst I laboured of a love to see,
I hazarded the loss of whom I loved.
Five summers have I spent in farthest Greece,
Roaming clean through the bounds of Asia,
And, coasting homeward, came to Ephesus:
Hopeless to find, yet loth to leave unsought,
Or that, or any place that harbours men.
But here must end the story of my life;
And happy were I in my timely death,

Could all my travels warrant me they live."

This mortal enmity between two towns, this appearance of a Syracusan before the Duke of Ephesus, this old man sentenced to death, and his touching narrative, make up an opening unsurpassed by any in the annals of the stage. But what shall be said of Shake