From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (London: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 466-68.
[This section was prepared and proofread by Deborah Hill.]
COMEDY OF ERRORS
1589-1623
After such sport, a "Comedy of Erorrs" (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. -- GESTA GRAYORUM, 1594.
As to the comic action which constitutes the chief bulk of this piece, if it be true that to excite laughter, awaken attention, and fix curiosity, be essential to its dramatic excellence, the "Comedy of Errors" cannot be pronounced an unsuccessful effort; both reader and spectator are hurried on to the close, through a series of thick-coming incidents, and under the pleasurable influence of novelty, expectation, and surprise; and the dialogue . . . is uniformly vivacious, pointed, and even effervescing. Shakspeare is visible, in fact, throughout the entire play, as well in the broad exuberance of its mirth, as in the cast of its more chastised parts, a combination of which may be found in the punishment and character of Pinch the pedagogue and conjurer, who is sketched in the strongest and most marked style of our author. If we consider, therefore, the construction of the fable, the narrowness of its basis, and that its powers of entertainment are almost exclusively confined to a continued deception of the external senses, we must confess that Shakspeare has not only improved on the Plautian model, but, making allowance for a somewhat too coarse vein of humour, has given to his production all the interest and variety that the nature and the limits of his subject would permit. -- DRAKE, NATHAN, 1817, Shakspeare and His Times vol. II, p. 288.
The myriad-minded man, our, and all men's, Shakspere, has in this piece presented us with a legitimate farce in exactest consonance with the philosophical principles and character of farce, as distinguished from comedy and from entertainments. -- COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR 1818, Lectures and Notes on Shakspere, ed Ashe, p. 292.
Until I saw it on the stage, (not mangled into an opera, ) I had not imagined the extent of the mistakes, the drollery of them, their unabated continuance, till, at the end of the fourth act, they reached their climax with the assistance of Dr. Pinch, when the audience in their laughter rolled about like waves. . . . To the strange contrast of grave astonishment among the actors, with their laughable situations in the eyes of the spectators, who are let into the secret, is to be ascribed the irresistible effect. -- BROWN, CHARLES ARMITAGE, 1838, Shakespeare's Autobiographical Poems, pp. 272, 273.
The "Comedy of Errors" is evidently one of Shakespeare's youthful works, and was probably written about 1591. This is supported not only by the frequent occurrence of rhymes and the long-drawn Alexandrines (doggerel verse) employed by the earlier English dramatists, but also by the greater carefulness and regularity of the language and versification. . . . Another proof of its early origin is the fresh, youthful atmosphere of joke and jest which pervades the whole, a naive pleasure in what is jocose and laughable for its own sake, and which, not being yet burdened by the weight of years, moves more lightly and more on the surface of things, and without that power and depth of humour which distinguishes the poet's maturer works. -- ULRICI, HERMANN, 1839, Shakespeare's Dramatic Art, tr. Schmitz.
In this play Shakspere gayly confronts improbabilities, and requires the spectator to accept them. He adds to the twins Antipholus the twins Dromio. If we are in for improbability, let us at least be re-paid for it by fun, and have that in abundance. Let the incredible become a two-fold incredibility, and it is none the worse. We may conclude that, while Shakspere was ready to try his hand upon a farcical subject, a single experiment satisfied him that this was not his province, for to such subjects he never returned. -- DOWDEN EDWARD, 1875-80, Shakspere, A Critical Study of His Mind and Art, p. 50.
The "Comedy of Errors" not only surpasses the "Menaechmi" in the greater complexity of its plot, its greater variety of incident, but also in its more generous treatment of human nature. Not that elaborately wrought-out characters are to be sought in it; for this, it must be remembered, is Shakespeare's most absolutely comic, and almost farcical play, and in this particular class of work he never handled the incisive tool of an engraver like Moliere, -- his pencil runs galloping over the canvas with a light fantastic touch; and this play is, moreover, one of his most youthful performances. -- STAPFER, PAUL, 1880, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity, tr. Carey, p. 150.
The reading of the play is like threading the mazes of a dream; where people and things are the same and not the same in the same moment. The mistakes, crosses, and vexations in the plot so rapidly succeed that to keep the course of events distinct in the mind is almost as desperate an achievement as following all the ramifications of a genealogical tree; and -- may it be said? -- about as useful. The piece, however, is amusing, and although our intellectual remuneration for the time expended is not remarkable, yet we should bear in mind that it is essentially a drama of action and circumstance; and if it could be effectually represented, the result would be infinitely ludicrous. -- CLARKE, CHARLES COWDEN, 1881, --Shakespeare-Characters, Second Series, quoted by Rolfe.
Act III, Scene i. seems to have been derived from the "Amphitruo" of Plautus; in the Latin comedy Mercury keeps the real Amphitruo out 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 AEgeon's touching story at the opening of the play, -- in Plautus, the father of the twins is already dead, end there is no reunion of husband, wife, and children. 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. -- GOLLANCZ, ISRAEL, 1894, ed. Temple Shakespeare Preface to the Comedy of Errors, p. viii.
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