Is it not highly probable that a young writer, in the inferior parts of his comedies, where the entertainment of the lower classes of his audience was particularly to be attended to, should adopt the same mode and the same loose versification for characters of their description, somewhat resembling that of the clown, which had been successfully and prescriptively appropriated to similar characters by preceding dramatists? Of the precedents which he copied in this instance, some examples may be found in The History of the English Stage, where some account of Tarleton is preserved; and several others are written at the end of the present comedy. Sir William Blackstone's observation, therefore, on this part of our present subject, appears to me extremely apposite and well founded; and the true inference to be drawn from the intermixture of this kind of metre is, not that it denotes another hand, but strongly indicates those plays in which it is found to have been among the writer's early essays in dramatick poetry, in which he in some measure walked in the steps of his predecessors. With respect to his earlier pieces, we do not rest upon conjecture: we know from the list transmitted by Meres* what plays he had produced before the end of the year 1598; and it is reasonable to suppose, that so careful and minute a writer, who appears to have been well acquainted with the poets of the time, did not, without good information, give the first place in that list to The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and The Comedy of Errors. The first productions of so extraordinary a dramatick poet as Shakspeare could not but have made a great impression on a man who appears to have been perfectly well acquainted with all the poetry of the time, and who doubtless was then a frequenter of the Curtain Theatre, where our poet's dramas were at that period exhibited. But to advert more particularly to the play now before us. It has been said that Shakspeare has not taken a single name, line, or word, from the translated Menæchmi of Plautus; which may be literally true, but is not easily reconcileable to an observation made by Mr. Steevens, in which he seems to think that our authour's description of the cheating mountebanks and pretended conjurers who infested Epidamnum was taken from thence. See p. 166. The truth, however, is, that he had no occasion to consult Warner's Translation of the Menæchmi for this or any other purpose; for it is extremely probable that he was furnished with the fable of the present comedy by a play on a similar subject, from which he might have derived the very description above alluded to; and there also he might have found the designations of surreptus and erraticus, of which some traces are exhibited in the original copy of this play. Of this piece no mention is made in any dramatick * Wit's Treasury, 8vo. 1598, p. 282. history that I have seen, nor in any of the fugitive pamphlets of ancient days; but the notice concerning it which I discovered not long after my former edition of these plays was published, furnishes us with decisive evidence on this subject; for the piece in question was acted before Queen Elizabeth in the year 1576-7, when our poet was in his thirteenth year. In the Historical Account of the English Stage may be found a list of the various performances exhibited before her Majesty during the Christmas festivities of the year above mentioned, among which is the following piece : "The Historie of Error, shewn at Hampton Court on New yeres daie at night [1576-7] enacted by the children of Pawles." As the dramas acted by the singing boys of St. Paul's Cathedral were generally founded on classical stories, it may be presumed that this ancient piece was in a good measure founded on the comedy of Plautus; and doubtless thus the fable was transmitted to Shakspeare. MALONE. A Merchant, Friend to Antipholus of Syracuse. ÆMILIA, Wife to Ægeon, an Abbess at Ephesus. ADRIANA, Wife to Antipholus of Ephesus. LUCIANA, her Sister. LUCE, her Servant. A Courtezan. Jailer, Officers, and other Attendants. SCENE, EPHESUS. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS. ACT I. SCENE I. A Hall in the DUKE'S Palace. Enter DUKE, ÆGEON, Jailer, Officers, and other Attendants. ÆGE. Proceed, Solinus, to procure my fall, And, by the doom of death, end woes and all. DUKE. Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more; I am not partial, to infringe our laws : The enmity and discord, which of late Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke Come to the bay of Ephesus, he dies, Both by the Syracusians,] modern editors have altered it to Syracusans, but it will be a sufficient vindication of the old spelling to state, that it has the sanction of Bentley, in his Dissertation on Phalaris. BOSWELL. His goods confiscate to the duke's dispose; To quit the penalty, and to ransom him. My woes end likewise with the evening sun. DUKE. Well, Syracusian, say, in brief, the cause Why thou departedst from thy native home; And for what cause thou cam'st to Ephesus. EGE. A heavier task could not have been impos'd, Than I to speak my griefs unspeakable: Yet, that the world may witness, that my end Unto a woman, happy but for me, 4 And by me too *, had not our hap been bad. To Epidamnum; till my factor's death, And the great care of goods at random left, 2 by NATURE, not by vile offence,] Not by any criminal act, but by natural affection, which prompted me to seek my son at Ephesus. Mr. M. Mason has made a similar observation. MALONE. 3 and WED] Wed for wedded was the phraseology of Shakspeare's time. So, in Timon of Athens: "Which makes the wappen'd widow wed again." 4 And by me too,] Too, which is not found in the original copy, was added by the editor of the second folio, to complete the MALONE. metre. "And THE great care of goods at random left, "Drew me from kind embracements of my spouse:] Thus |