"Two tw Menechm "The firs The grand "This "His broth "Where "That citi "Father, "Much pl Perhaps th At the be I suspe is used, been am "Menechmus one, and Sosicles the oth "The first his father lost, a little lad "The grandsire namde the latter like h "This (growne a man) long travell to "His brother, and to Epidamnum came "Where th' other dwelt inricht, and h "That citizens there take him for the s "Father, wife, neighbours, each mistak "Much pleasant error, ere they meet t Perhaps the last of these lines si the title for his piece. See this translation of the M Plays on which Shakespeare found Leacroft, Charing Cross. At the beginning of an address to the errata of Decker's Satiro following passage, which appare of the comedy before us: "In steed of the trumpets sour play begin, it shall not be amisse first to beholde this short Comed the greatest enter, to give them in tle correction." I suspect this and all other pla as used, and especially long hol been among Shakespeare's more I am possibly singular in thinking that Shakespeare was not under the slightest obligation, in forming this comedy, to Warner's translation of the Menæchmi. The additions of Erotes and Sereptus, which do not occur in that translation, and he could never invent, are, alone, a sufficient inducement to believe that he was no way indebted to it. But a further and more convincing proof is, that he has not a name, line, or word, from the old play, nor any one incident but what must, of course, be common to every translation. Sir William Blackstone, I observe, suspects "this and all other plays where much rhyme is used, and especially long hobbling verses, to have been among Shakespeare's more early productions." But I much doubt whether any of these "long hobbling verses" have the honour of proceeding from his pen; and, in fact, the superior elegance and harmony of his language is no less distinguishable in his earliest than his latest production. The truth is, if any inference can be drawn from the most striking dissimilarity of style, a tissue as different as silk and worsted, that this comedy, though boasting the embellishments of our author's genius, in additional words, lines, speeches, and scenes, was not originally his, but proceeded from some inferior playwright, who was capable of reading the Menæchmi without the help of a translation, or, at least, did not make use of Warner's. And this I take to have been the case, not only with the three Parts of King Henry VI. (though not, perhaps, exactly in the way, or to the extent, maintained by a late editor,) but with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and King Richard II. in all which pieces Shakespeare's new work is as apparent as the brightest touches of Titian would be on the poorest performance of the veriest canvass spoiler that ever handled a brush. The originals of these plays were never printed, and may be thought to have been put into his hands by the manager, for the purpose of alteration and improvement, which we find to have been an ordinary practice of the theatre in his time. We are therefore no longer to look upon the above "pleasant and fine conceited comedie," as entitled to a situation among the " six plays on which Shake(89) |