the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for 't thou think'st not of this now." Shakespeare did not, like Marlowe, put away the clown in which his public delighted, but he bade him speak the words set down for him, and gave him words that brought him within bounds of the thought and action of the play.

"The Two Gentlemen of Verona "

(friends, named-one, from association with an old February custom, Valentine, for he is a faithful lover; the other, from the old god who could take many shapes, Proteus, for he is unfaithful), are set in a story that grows out of the unfaithfulness of Proteus. Proteus is the one unfaithful person in the story, and he is met everywhere by examples of fidelity. He plays false, and hears the right note struck constantly by those about him.

In the First Act the friendship is shown, with the love of Proteus for Julia. Valentine, not pledged yet to any lady, is sent by his father to the Court at Milan. The father of Proteus resolves that he also shall go to the Court at Milan.

The Second Act shows at Milan Valentine's love for the duke's

daughter, Silvia. Proteus, following to Milan, breaking faith with Valentine his friend and Julia his mistress, plots to win Silvia; while faithful Julia, disguised as a page, will seek Proteus in Milan. Proteus hopes to succeed by a perfidious plot, and marks the selfishness of infidelity by the excuse to himself: "I to myself am dearer than a friend."

The Third Act sets forth the treachery of Proteus, who betrays Valentine's secret to the duke, and offers to belie him to Silvia. Valentine is banished.

In the Fourth Act Valentine is taken by outlaws and becomes their captain. Julia has joined Proteus. There is set forth the fidelity of Silvia and Julia to their loves, also the fidelity of Launce to his dog and to his master. He was ready to give even Crab away in his master's service. Proteus finds that

"Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy,

To be corrupted with my worthless gifts."

And Julia, when the host brings her in her boy's dress to hear the music

below Silvia's window, in which Proteus takes chief part, causes the

host to say

"How now! are you sadder than you were before? How do you, man? the music likes you not.

Julia. You mistake: the musician likes me not.

Host. Why, my pretty youth?

Julia. He plays false, father.

Host. How? out of tune on the strings?

Julia. Not so; but yet so false, that he grieves my very heartstrings.

Host. You have a quick ear.

Julia. Ay, I would I were deaf! it makes me have a slow heart.

Host. I perceive, you delight not in music.

Julia. Not when it jars so.

Host. Hark, what fine change is in the music.

Julia. Ay, that change is the spite."

Silvia resolves to go in search of banished Valentine, and chooses for companion and protector in her enterprise the faithful Eglamour.

Thyself hast loved; and I have heard thee say,

No grief did ever come so near thy heart

As when thy lady and thy true love died,

Upon whose grave thou vow'dst pure chastity.

Sir Eglamour, I would to Valentine,

To Mantua, where I hear he makes abode;
And, for the ways are dangerous to pass,
I do desire thy worthy company,

Upon whose faith and honour I repose."

In the Fifth Act, which, through adventures in the forest, brings the story to an end, it should be noted not only that repentance instantly restores his friend to Proteus, but that the true friendship is distinguished from the false by a large spirit of self-sacrifice. Opposed to the former reasoning of Proteus, "I to myself am dearer than a friend," is the addition made by Valentine of a deed to the words of full reconciliation

"And, that my love may appear plain and free,
All that was mine in Silvia I give thee."

Thus he releases Silvia of all pledges that might restrain her from taking Proteus if she will, and Shakespeare marks decisively the self

"All that was mine in Silvia" was what was hers, which Proteus But the infidelity of Proteus is and the last line of the play

denying character of a true friend. all he had to give. He could not give must win from her if he would win her. conquered also by the fidelity of Julia, promises to the marriage-day of Proteus and Julia, Valentine and Silvia,

"One feast, one house, one mutual happiness."

The

The story of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" seems to have been chiefly of Shakespeare's own fashioning. The laying of the scene in Italy, and the romance material, followed, of course, the fashion of the day. It has been thought that Valentine among the outlaws might have been. suggested by that part of the first book of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia" which tells of Pyrocles among the Helots. book was written in 1580-81, and first published in 1590, four years after Sidney's death. But there is no resemblance in the incidents, except their association with a tale of friendship. Musidorus finds the chief of the Helots to be his friend Pyrocles, whom he had supposed to be drowned. We may take for granted, also, that Shakespeare was in 1590 among the first readers of Sidney's "Arcadia," and remember that "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" was written in 1591 or 1592.

There is clearer indication of an influence upon the matter of the play from a pastoral romance in prose mixed with verse-" Diana Enamorada"-by George of Montemayor. He was a Portuguese of Montemayor, near Coimbra. He began the tale in his youth, following the example set by the "Arcadia" of Sannazaro, and it was first printed at Valencia in 1542. A second part, in eight books, written. by Alonzo Perez, was published in 1564; but even then the work was incomplete. Its fame caused it to be translated by Bartholomew Yonge, and although his translation was not printed until 1598, six or seven years after the production

of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," he says of it "that it had lyen by him finished Horaces ten and sixe yeeres more." There is, however, upon record, as produced in the year 1584, "The History of Felix and Philismena, shewed and enacted before her highnes by her Mats servaunts on the sondaie nexte after newyeares daie, at night at Greenwiche." This play is lost, but it seems to have been founded upon incidents in the "Diana” which are given in Bartholomew Yonge's translation. The incidents of the maid and the love-letter and of the serenade are clearly the source of like incidents in Shakespeare's story of Julia and Proteus.

The German collection of "English Comedies and Tragedies," published in 1620, includes a "Tragedy of Julius and Hippolyta." This has been printed in Albert Cohn's

Shakespeare in Germany" as probably derived from the old play that suggested the part of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" which sets forth the treachery of Proteus. In the German version of this piece two Romans, Romulus and Julius, are friends. Julius betrays Romulus in his love. When Romulus goes abroad, Julius gives to the Princess Hippolyta forged letters designed to incense her and her father, the prince, against Romulus, from whom they are supposed to come. There is a clown, Grobianus Pickelhering, who may stand for Launce, and Romulus has also a servant. Those are the characters. Romulus learns how he has been deceived-as much, he supposes, by Hippolyta as by his friend. He comes masked to their wedding, dances, then draws a dagger and kills Julius. Hippolyta takes up the dagger and stabs herself. Romulus. then stabs himself. If Shakespeare owed anything to the lost English original of this very poor piece, we may note what he substituted for a dagger and three deaths, repentance followed by the instant flash of a complete forgiveness.

"The Comedy of Errors," like "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," was first printed in

first folio of Shakespeare's works.

1623, in the

"The

It is named Comedy

of Errors."

in Meres's list between "The Two Gentlemen of Verona and "Love's Labour's Lost," Shakespeare's earliest original comedies.

A play called "The Historie of Error" was acted at Hampton Court by the Children of Paul's on New Year's Day, 1576-77, some ten years before Shakespeare came to London; and on Twelfth Night, in 1583 (new style), there was acted before Queen Elizabeth a "Historie of Ferrar," which may have been the same play incorrectly entered. Although the use at Court of classical themes might make it likely enough that this play-which is not preservedmay have been an early version in English of the "Menæchmi," it is quite as likely to have been some allegorical piece, and we cannot lay much stress upon the possibility that Shakespeare may have used it as the groundwork of his "Comedy of Errors."

There is one passage in "The Comedy of Errors " which raises almost to certainty the great probability that it is, like "The Two Gentlemen of Verona and "Love's Labour's Lost," one of Shakespeare's earliest pieces. When, in the second scene of the Third Act, Dromio is making out the geography of the globe of Nell the kitchen wench, he finds France "in her forehead, armed and reverted, making war against her heir." The play on the words hair and heir here must refer to the civil war against the succession of Henri IV., who became heir to the throne in August, 1589, and secured his crown by becoming a Roman Catholic in July, 1593.

In December, 1594, a piece, which probably was Shakespeare's "Comedy of Errors," was acted at Gray's Inn, as told in a volume of "Gesta Greyorum" relating to that year: "After such sports a Comedy of Errors' (like to