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INTRODUCTORY REMARK

SOURCE OF THE PLOT, CHARACTER AND DATE OF THE PLAY.

HERE are about ten or twelve plots of comic incident that have come down to our times from remote antiquity,—some in the narrative form and others in the dramatic,—which are so rich in unexpected or ludicrous situations and circumstances, so fertile in new suggestions and combinations, that they have passed along from generation to generation, through various languages and widely differing forms of society, always preserving the power of interesting and amusing, and affording to one race of wits and authors after another a happy groundwork for their own gayety or invention.

Among these is the story of the Menæchmi of Plautus, founded on the whimsical mistakes and confusion arising from the perfect resemblance of twin brothers. Plautus is to us the original author of this amusing plot; but it is quite probable that the old Latin comic writer stands in the same relation to some Greek predecessor that the moderns do to him. There are some Greek fragments preserved of a lost play of Menander's, entitled "Didymi, or The Twins," which, there is great probability, was the original comedy here adapted by Plautus, as it is known he did other Greek originals, to the Latin stage. The subject became a favourite one among the dramatists of the continent at an early period of our modern literature. A paraphrastic version or adaptation of the Menæchmus was, it is supposed, the very earliest specimen of dramatic composition in the Italian language; and in various forms and additions, more or less farcical, the subject has kept possession of the Italian stage. There is also a Spanish version of it about the date of the COMEDY OF ERRORS. In France, Rotrou, the acknowledged father of the legitimate French drama, introduced a free translation or imitation of Plautus's original upon the French stage. La Noble farcified it some years after into the "Two Harlequins ;" and finally, Regnard, in a free and spirited imitation, transferred the scene from Asia Minor to Paris, adapted to French manners and habits, clothed his dialogue in gay and polished verses worthy of the rival of Molière, and made the Menæchmes a part of the classic French comedy.

Such was the early and wide-spread popularity of this plot, before and soon after Shakespeare's time, which I mention merely as a curious fact of literary history, or, perhaps, of the philosophy of our lighter literature, than as directly connected with Shakespeare's choice of a subject; for, indeed, there is no clear indication that he had recourse to any other original than the Latin of Plautus himself. Of this there was, indeed, a bald and somewhat paraphrastical translation by Warner, which it is possible (though there is little probability of it) that Shakespeare may have seen in manuscript. This was published in 1595, which is later than the probable date of the COMEDY OF ERRORS. There is also evidence of the existence of an old play called "The Historie of Error" which was acted at court in 1576-7, and again in 1582, and is conjectured by the critics to have been founded on the same plot; but this seems a mere gratuitous conjecture, for which no reason but the use of the word "error" in the title has been assigned. That title would rather indicate a masque or allegorical pageant of Error than a comedy of laughable mistakes. There is no resemblance between Warner's translation and the COMEDY OF ERRORS in any peculiarity of language, of names, or any matter, however slight, which could not (like the main plot) have been drawn from the original, by a very humble Latinist. The accurate Ritson has ascertained that there is not a single name, or thought, or phrase peculiar to Warner to be traced in Shakespeare's play. Stevens, and others, maintain the opinion (to which Collier also seems to incline) that the old court-drama of the "Historie of Error" was the basis of the present play, that much of the dialogue, incident, and character is retained, and that Shakespeare merely remodelled the whole, and added some of those scenes and portions which bear their own evidence that they could have come from his pen alone.

All these conjectural opinions, though made with great confidence by several critics, seem to me wholly unfounded. There is no external evidence whatever of the existence of any such play as is alleged to have been incorporated in this comedy, and the internal evidence seems to me equally clear against a double authorship by writers of different times and tastes. The whole piece is written in the same buoyant spirit, with no more pause to its gayety than was needed to add to the interest by graver narrative dialogue. Broad and farcical as much of it is, it has as much unity of purpose and spirit as MACBETH itself. The dramatist used the Latin comedy, (whether in the original or a translation is immaterial on this occasion,) as he afterwards did Hollingshed's history, using the incidents only as the materials of his own invention; and this was done in an unbroken strain of joyous humour, as if the author enjoyed all the while his own frolic conceptions and the puzzle of his audience. Plautus had on

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