which undertooke to assure her, let her see a glasse, representing a hall, in the which either of them made so many turns as he should raigne yeares; and that King Kenry the Third, making his, the Duke of Guise crost him like a flash of lightning; after which the Prince of Navarre presented himselfe, and made 22 turnes, and then vanished." P. Mathieu's Heroyk life and deploreable death of Henry the Fourth, translated by Ed. Grimeston, 4to. 1612. p. 42. Again, "It is reported that a Duke of Bourgondy had like to have died for feare at the sight of the nine worthies which a magician shewed him." Ib. p. 116. REED. It may be worth while to remark, that Milton, who left behind him a list of no less than CII. dramatic subjects, had fixed on the story of this play among the rest. His intention was to have begun with the arrival of Malcolm at Macduff's castle. "The matter of Duncan (says he) may be expressed by the appearing of his ghost." It should seem from this last memorandum, that Miltou disliked the licence his predecessor had taken in comprehending a history of such length within the short compass of a play, and would have new-written the whole on the plan of the ancient drama. He could not surely have indulged so vain a hope, as that of excelling Shakspeare in the Tragedy of Macbeth. STEEVENS. Macbeth was certainly one of Shakspeare's latest productions, and it might possibly have been sug gested to him by a little performance on the same subject at Oxford, before King James, 1605. I will transcribe my notice of it from Wake's Rex Platonicus: "Fabulae ansam dedit antiqua de regià J 324 0‹ ¡NOTES TO ¿MACBETH«dy, 29bie^8 s to ganonoɔ sdi bas 9159gelade lo 25, prosapia historiola apud Scoto Britannos cele brata, quaenkrat tres olim Sibyllas, duobus Scoriae proceribus, Macbetho et Banehous et illam praedixisse regem futurum, sed regum nullum geniturun hunc regem non futurum, sed reges geniturum multos. Vaticinii veritatem rerum eventus comprobavit. Bauchonis enim e stirpe potentissimus Jacobus oriundus,” p. 29., Since I made the observation here quoted, L have been repeatedly told, that I unwittingly make Shakspeare learned at least in Latin, as this must have Been the language of the performance before King Jamesus bone might perhaps have plausibly said, that he probably picked up the story at second-hand but mere accident has thrown an old pamphlet in my way, intitled The Oxford Triumph, by one Anthony Nixon, 1605, This performance, says Antony, was first in Latine King, then in English, to the necne and and young Prince" and, as he goes on t to the conceipt thereof the Kinge did very much applaude." It is likely that the friendly letter, which we are informed King James, once wrote to Shakspeare, was on this occasion, FARMER. which explains the whole matteratine to the to tell "guse abrid STE Shakspeare might have taken the general plan of this comedy from a translation of the Menaechmi of Plautus, by W. W. i. e. (according to Wood) William Warner, in 1595, whose version of the acrostical argument hereafter quoted, is as follows: "Two twinne borne sonnes a Sicill mar- "Menechmus one, and Soficles the other; "This (growne a man) long travell took to His brother, and to Epidamnum came, "That citizens there take him for the same: Father, wife, neighbours, each mistaking either, "Much pleasant error, ere they meet togither." Perhaps the last of these lines suggested to Shakspeare the title for his piece. See this translation of the Menaechmi, among six old Plays on which Shakspeare founded, &c. published by S. Leacroft, Charing cross. At the beginning of an address Ad Lectorem, prefixed to the errata of Dekker's Satiromastix, &c. 1602, is the following passage, which apparently alludes to the title of the comedy before us. "In steed of the Trumpets sounding thrice before the play begin, it shall not be amisse (for him that will read) first to beholde this short Comedy of Errors, and where the greatest enter, to give them instead of a hisse, a gentle correction." STEEVENS. I suspect this and all other plays where much rhime is used, and especially long hobbling verses, to have been among Shakspeare's more early productions. BLACKSTONE. I am possibly singular in thinking that Shakspeare was not under the slightest obligation," in forming this comedy, to Warner's translation of the Menaechmi. 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 rhine is used, and especially long hobbling verses, to have been among Shakspeare'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 productions. The truth is if any in→ ference can be drawn from the most striking dissimilarity of stile, 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 ori→ ginally his, but proceeded from some inferior playwright, who was capable of reading the Menaechmi 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. as I think a late editor (O si sic omnia!) has satisfactorily proved, but with The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Love's Labour's Lost, and K. Richard II. in all which pieces Shakspeare's new work is as apparent as the brightest touches of Titian would be on the poorest perform-of the veriest canvass spoiler that ever handled a brush. The originals of these plays (except the second and third parts of K. Henry VI.) were never printed, and inay 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 intitled to a situation among the "six plays on which Shakspeare founded his Measure for Measure, &c." of which I should hope to see a new and improved edition. RITSON. ance This comedy, I believe, was written in 1595. See An Attempt to ascertain the order of Shakspeare's Plays. MALONE. |