All the unsigned footnotes in this volume are by the writer of the article to which they are appended.

The interpretation of the initials signed to the others is: I. G.

Israel Gollancz, M.A.; H. N. H. Henry Norman Hudson, A.M.; C. H. H.⇒ C. H. Herford, Litt.D.

PREFACE

By ISRAEL GOLLANCZ, M.A.

THE FIRST EDITION

The Comedy of Errors first appeared in the Folio of 1623, where it immediately follows Measure for Measure. "The names of all the actors" are not given at the end of the play as in the case of the previous plays; in the stage-directions to the first two Acts the two Antipholi are distinguished as Antipholus Erotes and Antipholus Sereptus; the latter title was probably derived from the Menæchmus Surreptus of Plautus, a character evidently wellknown to the Elizabethans (cp. Cambridge Shakespeare, Note 1); as regards the former name, it is noteworthy that Erotion (also Errotis in Act II.) is the name of "the Courtezan" in Plautus' Menæchmi; to this source the name may perhaps be referred; otherwise it must be regarded as an error for Erraticus or Errans.

The Comedy of Errors is the shortest of all Shakespeare's plays; its total number of lines is 1,770.

DATE OF COMPOSITION

The Comedy of Errors is mentioned in 1598 by Meres in his Palladis Tamia among the six "excellent" comedies of Shakespeare. In the Gesta Grayorum of 1594 occurs what is probably the earliest reference to the play:—

"After such sport, a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Menechmus) was played by the players; so that night began and continued to the end, in nothing but confusion and errors; whereupon it was ever afterwards called the Night of Errors." There are other references to comedies

of "Errors" (a “Historie of Error" was acted by the St. Paul's children at Greenwich as early as New Year 1576–7), but they merely indicate that the phrase was proverbial. Certain critics detect in these pre-Shakespearean plays the original of Shakespeare's Comedy.

One or two points of internal evidence are helpful in fixing the approximate time of composition. In Act III. ii. 125 there is evidently an allusion to the civil war in France between Henry III and Henry of Navarre, which lasted from August, 1589, to July, 1593. Further, the reference to "whole armadoes of caracks" in the same scene suggests the earlier rather than the later limit: the play may safely be dated 1589-91.1 This early date is corroborated by the general style of the play :-its lyrical passages with rhyming couplets and alternate rhymes; the doggerel verse; the abundance of quibbles and word-play; "the prologue-like" speech of Egeon in the opening scene; lines suggestive of other early plays (e.g. Act II. ii. 201, reminds us of Midsummer-Night's Dream; cp. Act IV. i. 93, and Love's Labor's Lost, II. i. 219, and Two Gentlemen of Verona, I. i. 72).

SOURCES OF THE PLOT

The main plot of The Comedy of Errors is directly or indirectly derived from the Menæchmi of Plautus,—“ _"a farce of mistaken identity," which very early in the history of the modern drama became a favorite theme with dramatists: pre-Shakespearean paraphrases and adaptations exist in French, German, and Italian; the interlude of "Jack Juggler" (1563) is probably its earliest representative in English literature. The oldest extant English translation appeared in the year 1595, with the following title:-Menæcmi, A pleasant and fine conceited Comedie, taken out of the most excellent wittie Poet Plautus. Chosen purposely from out the rest, as least harmefull,

1 Cp. An attempt to determine Chronological Order of Shakespeare's Plays; H. P. Stokes, pp. 16–20.

and yet most delightfull. Written in English, by W. W.

tion is in prose; an argument in verse precedes :

"Two Twinborn sons, a Sicill merchant had,
Menechmus one, and Soseles the other:
The first his Father lost, a little lad,

The Grandsire named the latter like his brother.
This (grown a man) long travel took to seek
His brother, and to Epidamnum came,
Where th' other dwelt inriched, and him so like,
That Citizens there take him for the same:

Father, wife, neighbours, each mistaking either,
Much pleasant error, ere they meet togither."

These lines may serve to indicate the leading points of dif-
ference between the simple Latin farce and the complex
Comedy of Errors. (The translation is to be found in
Hazlitt's Shakespeare's Library, Part II. vol. 1.)

It is impossible to determine whether Shakespeare owes anything to Warner's translation, which may have existed in manuscript long before the date of its entry on the books of the Stationers' Company (1594). It is perhaps noteworthy that Adriana in the Comedy and the wife of Menechus the Citizen in the English translation both use the same word with reference to their supposed ignoble treatment:

Senex. What is the matter?

Mulier. He makes me a stale and a laughing-stock to all the world.

cp. Comedy of Errors, Act. II. i. 100:

Adriana.

He breaks the pale,
And feeds from home; poor I am but his stale.

A few minor points of this description (e.g. the use of "error" in the last line of the Argument) have led some scholars to the conclusion that Shakespeare had read Warner's version of the play. But may not the translator owe this small debt to the dramatist?

Act III. Scene i. seems to have been derived from the

Amphitruo of Plautus; in the Latin comedy Mercury keeps the real Amphitruo cut of his own house, while Jupiter, the sham Amphitruo, is within with Alcmena, the real Amphitruo's wife.

The introduction of the twin Dromios is Shakespeare's own device; and all the pathos of the play is his; there is nothing in the Latin original suggestive of Ægeon's touching story at the opening of the play, in Plautus, the father of the twins is already dead. and there is no reunion of husband, wife, and children.

THE UNITIES

In spite, however, of this romanticizing of Plautus, Shakespeare has maintained throughout the play the hallowed unities of time and place, "the necessary companions," according to Academic criticism, "of all corporal actions." From this point of view The Comedy of Errors may be regarded as the final triumph of the New Romantic Drama over its opponents; it carried the warfare into the enemy's camp, and scored the signal victory of harmonizing Old and New, the conventional canons of Latin Comedy and the pathos of Romanticism.