nor the purpose of the person to whom the information is to be given, but manifestly betraying the author himself,—not by way of continuous under-song, but-palpably, and so as to show themselves addressed to the general reader. However, it is not unimportant to notice how strong a presumption the diction and allusions of this play afford, that, though Shakspeare's acquirements in the dead languages might not be such as we suppose in a learned education, his habits had, nevertheless, been scholastic, and those of a student. For a young author's first work almost always bespeaks his recent pursuits, and his first observations of life are either drawn from the immediate employments of his youth, and from the characters and images most deeply impressed on his mind in the situations in which those employments had placed him ;—or else they are fixed on such objects and occurrences in the world, as are easily connected with, and seem to bear upon, his studies and the hitherto exclusive subjects of his meditation. Just as Ben Jonson, who applied himself to the drama after having served in Flanders, fills his earliest plays with true or pretended soldiers, the wrongs and neglects of the former, and the absurd boasts and knavery of their counterfeits. So Lessing's first comedies are placed in the universities, and consist of events and characters conceivable in an academic life."-COLERIDGE. "LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST is numbered among the pieces of Shakspeare's youth. It is a humorsome display of frolic; a whole cornucopia of the most vivacious jokes is emptied into it. Youth is certainly perceivable in the lavish superfluity of labour in the execution; the unbroken succession of plays on words, and sallies of every description, hardly leave the spectator time to breathe; the sparkles of wit fly about in such profusion, that they resemble a blaze of fireworks; while the dialogue, for the most part, is in the same hurried style in which the passing masks at a carnival attempt to banter each other. The young king of Navarre, with three of his courtiers, has made a vow to pass three years in rigid retirement, and devote them to the study of wisdom; for that purpose he has banished all female society from his court, and imposed a penalty on the intercourse with women. But scarcely has he, in a pompous harangue, worthy of the most heroic achievements, announced this determination, when the daughter of the king of France appears at his court, in the name of her old and bed-ridden father, to demand the restitution of a province which he held in pledge. Compelled to give her audience, he falls immediately in love with her. Matters fare no better with his companions, who on their parts renew an old acquaintance with the princess's attendants. Each, in heart, is already false to his vow, without knowing that the wish is shared by his associates; they overhear one another, as they in turn confide their sorrows in a love-ditty to the solitary forest; every one jeers and confounds the one who follows him. Biron, who from the beginning was the most satirical among them, at last steps forth, and rallies the king and the two others, till the discovery of a love-letter forces him also to hang down his head. He extricates himself and his companions from their dilemma by ridiculing the folly of the broken vow, and after a noble eulogy on women, invites them to swear new allegiance to the colours of love. This scene is inimitable, and the crowning beauty of the whole. The manner in which they afterwards prosecute their love-suits in masks and disguise, and in which they are tricked and laughed at by the ladies, who are also masked and disguised, is, perhaps, spun out too long. It may be thought, too, that the poet, when he suddenly announces the death of the king of France, and makes the princess postpone her answer to the young prince's serious advances till the expiration of the period of her mourning, and impose, besides, a heavy penance on him for his levity, drops the proper comic tone. But the tone of raillery which prevails throughout the piece, made it hardly possible to bring about a more satisfactory conclusion: after such extravagance, the characters could not return to sobriety, except under the presence of some foreign influence. The grotesque figures of Don Armado, a pompous fantastic Spaniard, a couple of pedants, and a clown, who between whiles contribute to the entertainment, are the creation of a whimsical imagination, and well adapted as foils for the wit of so vivacious a society." -SCHLEGEL.

THE

COMEDY OF ERRORS.

“THE Comedie of Errors" is one of those plays no copy of which has been discovered prior to that in the folio of 1623. It is noticed by Meres, (Palladis Tamia, 1598,) and, in all probability, was written, and acted first, in the very dawn of Shakespeare's genius. The main incident appears to have been taken from the Menæchmi of Plautus, but whether directly, or through the medium of some early translation of the Roman comedy, will most likely remain a subject of interesting speculation to editors and commentators for ages yet unborn.

Steevens conceived that our author was indebted to an English version by W. W[arner], printed in 1595, but there are circumstances which militate strongly against this presumption. In the first place, we have almost decisive proof that the present play was publicly performed a year before Warner's Menæchmi appeared, since in the Gesta Grayorum of 1594 (published in 4to, 1688) is the following entry :-" After such sports, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players; so that night was begun and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called the Night of Errors." (P. 22.) Again, it is reasonable to expect, if Shakespeare had adopted Warner's version for the groundwork of his play, that some coincidence in the names of the characters, or at least some parallelism in the ideas and turns of expression, would be evident in the two works; but none has been detected. Another circumstance adverse to Steevens' conjecture, is the fact that the brothers Antipholus in Shakespeare's comedy are respectively distinguished, in the opening scenes, as Antipholus Erotes, or Errotis, and Antipholus Sereptus (corruptions, perhaps, of erraticus and surreptus), appellatives which are not found in Warner.* Taken singly, these facts are not of much weight, but together, they certainly tend to prove that the youthful dramatist either went at once to Plautus for so much of his fable and characters as are borrowed, or took them from some other source than the Menæchmi of Warner. The latter is the more probable and popular hypothesis. Without assenting to the opinion of those Commentators who deny to Shakespeare any acquaintance with Greek and Latin (languages, it should be remembered, which were better and more extensively cultivated in his day than in ours), we may safely suppose that, engrossed as his time and mind must have been as an actor, a shareholder in the theatre, and a dramatic writer, whenever he had more than one source at command for the derivation of his story, he preferred that which gave him the least trouble to apprehend. That it was his practice, where the subject of his plot is taken from the ancients, to resort to existing translations, rather than apply to the originals themselves, we know, indeed, by comparing Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, &c. &c., with the translation of Plutarch extant in his time. The question then arises, did any English version of the Menæchmi, besides that by Warner, exist before the "Comedy of Errors was written. We believe there did. The indefatigable Malone was the first to discover evidence of an old play called "The Historie of Error," which, according to the Accounts of the Revels in Queen Elizabeth's Court preserved in the Audit Office, was acted at Hampton Court on New Year's Night, 1576-77, "by the children of Powles."+

The same accounts contain an entry, under the date of 1582-3, which may be assumed to refer to this play, although the title, through the ignorance or carelessness of the scribe, is misprinted, "A Historie of Ferrar shewed before her Majestie at Wyndesor on Twelfdaie at night, enacted by the Lord Chamberlayne's servauntes," &c.

In "The Historie of Error," then, we have possibly the foundation of Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," and the source whence he adopted the designations erraticus and surreptus, which the players or printers corrupted into Erotes and Sereptus.

Mr. Halliwell has observed that the title of this comedy was either a common proverb, or furnished the subject of one; and in his magnificent edition of the great dramatist he adduces the following instances where it is mentioned by contemporary writers :-" Anton, in his Philosophical Satires, 1616, p. 51, exclaims- What Comedies of Errors swell the stage!' So also Decker, in his Knights Conjuring, 1607— His ignorance, arising from his blindeness, is the onely cause of this Comedie of Errors;' and previously, in his Satiro-mastix, 1602, he seems to allude to the play itself Instead of the trumpets sounding thrice before the play begin, it shall not be amisse, for him that will read, first to behold this short Comedy of Errors, and where the greatest enter, to give them instead of a hisse, a gentle correction.' Again also, in the Meeting of Gallants at an Ordinarie, 1604,—This was a prettie Comedie of Errors, my round host.""

How long before the notice of it by Meres in 1598 the Comedy of Errors was acted, we can only conjecture from internal indications. The "long hobbling verses," as Blackstone termed them, that are found in it, and which were a marked peculiarity in the old plays anterior to Shakespeare's day, would alone determine it to have been one of his youthful efforts. Theobald was of opinion, too, that Dromio's reply (Act III. Sc. 2), to the question where he found France in the "globe"-like kitchen wench,—

"In her forehead; arm'd and reverted, making war against her heir,"

was an allusion to the civil wars in France upon the succession of Henry IV. of Navarre; whose claim as heir was resisted by the States of France on account of his being a Protestant. If any such equivoque between hair and heir were really intended, which is fairly presumable, this passage would serve to fix the date of the play somewhere between 1589, when the war began, and 1593, the period of its termination.