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one in Epidamnum, the other in Ephesus, the several cities are described in odious colours. The idea is the same in each play; but the descriptions are too decidedly different for one to have originated from the other.

The characters of a parasite, and father-inlaw of Menechmus of Epidamnum, have no existence in the Comedy of Errors.

The incidents in the Comedy of Errors, not found in Menechmus, are, the introduction of the father and mother of the twin brothers; the sister-in-law of Antipholus of Ephesus, with whom Antipholus of Syracuse falls in love; and the duplication of the original plot in the persons of the two Dromios. In Menechmus, the traveller is accompanied by a servant, Messenio. In the Comedy of Errors, each of the brothers has a servant; and these servants, like their masters, are twins, so perfectly resembling each other, that they are not to be known apart: a new source of error and confusion is thus opened, where most readers will be inclined to believe

enough existed before. Notwithstanding this accumulation of perplexities, the scenes are conducted with infinite skill and ingenuity, and the play brought to a clear and satisfactory conclusion.

The introduction of Ægeon, the father of the Antipholus', enables Shakspeare to dispense

with the "Argument" attached to the Menechmus; an equally satisfactory reason cannot be assigned for the presence of Æmilia, his wife. Improbability only is added, by the alteration of the causes of the separation of the brothers. The change of the younger brother's name by an affectionate grandfather, anxious to perpetuate the name of a darling child, is perfectly natural in Menechmus. The change is made in the Comedy of Errors; but all mention of the occasion is neglected. It is left equally unaccounted for, how the Dromios became possessed of the same name.

248

LOVE'S LABOUR'S LOST.

1594.

THE HE Scene of Love's Labour's Lost is laid in Navarre. The king retires to a secluded palace with his nobility, vowing to dedicate the three ensuing years to study; to admit no woman within the precincts of his court; to debar himself entirely from female society; and to live in the strictest abstinence from every personal indulgence. Unfortunately, for letters and mortification, the princess of France arrives on an embassy from her father; a circumstance necessarily leading to an interview between the fair ambassadress and the secluded king. His majesty falls in love with the princess; his lords with her attendants; and thus sacrifice their vows at the shrine of beauty. Each of the ladies imposes on her lover a penance for his perjury, the performance of which is to entitle him to her hand; and with this understanding the play closes.

Love's Labour's Lost is one of the very few plays of its author that are not ascertained to have been founded on some previously existing work. Its incidents, however, are so simple, and in such entire conformity with the chivalric and romantic feeling of the sixteenth century, that they would readily present themselves to any mind imbued with the fashionable literature of the age.

The play is rich and spirited in dialogue, and full of the poetry of fancy. Many of its observations have passed into sentences, though the drama itself has fallen into neglect. Biron is still referred to as the character of a genuine wit.

"Another of these students at that time

Was there with him : if I have heard a truth,
Biron they call him ; but a merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,

I never spent an hour's talk withal;
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch,
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest ;
Which his fair tongue (conceit's expositor,)
Delivers in such apt and gracious words,
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse." *

In the coincidence of sparkling wit, and indulgence in somewhat bitter repartee, Rosalind may not unaptly be considered the first sketch of a character which the author fully embodied afterwards in Beatrice, as Biron was,

doubtedly, the precursor of Benedick.

un

Rosalind. "Oft have I heard of you, my lord Biron,
Before I saw you: and the world's large tongue
Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks;
Full of comparisons and wounding flouts;
Which you on all estates will execute,
That lie within the mercy of your wit."

Biron takes himself to task for falling in love so identically, in the spirit of Benedick, that his soliloquy might, with very slight variation, be transferred to the scenes of Much Ado about Nothing, without any injury to the keeping of that admirably delineated character.

"O!—And I, forsooth, in love! I, that have been love's whip;

A very beadle to a humorous sigh;

A critick; nay, a night-watch constable;
A domineering pedant o'er the boy,

Than whom no mortal so magnificent!

This wimpled, whining, purblind, wayward boy;
This senior-junior, giant-dwarf, Dan Cupid;
Regent of love-rhymes, lord of folded arms,

*Act V. sc. 2.

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