The San Francisco call., 1899-10-30

equal to the best of these men. Such
lines as these are to the point, the words
of Antipholus Of Syracuse, in which he
speaks in tone of melancholy of his
long-lost and long-sought brother:
I to the world am like drop of water
That in the ocean seeks another drop,
Who, falling there to find his fellow forth,
Unseen, lnquisitive, confounds himself
So l. to find mother and brother.
In quest of them, unhappy lose myself
Again we may cite the words of Luci-
ana to Adriana that may have in them a
tinge Of Shakespeare's own experience:
There's nothing situate under heavens eye
But hath his bound, in earth, in sea, in sky;
The beasts, the fishes and the winged fowls
Are their males subjects and at their controls;
Men. more divine the masters Of all these.
Lords Of the wide world and wild watery seas,
Indued with intellectual sense and souls
OF more pre-eminence than the fish and fowls,
Are masters to their females and
Then let your will attend their accords.
The words Of love with which Antipho-
lus of Syracuse addresses Luciano have
in them some of the lyrical melody of
Romeo and Juliet:
Oh, train me not. sweet mermaid. with thy
note,
To drown me in thy sisters food of tears;
Sing, siren, for thyself and 1 will dote
Spread Ger the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And, as abed, I'll take them and there lie.
And in that glorious supposition. think
He gains by death that hath such means to die;
Let love, being light be drowned if she sink.
Altogether different from these pas
sages is the description of DR.. Pinch in
words that are in Shakespeare's best
manner:
Along with them
They brought one Pinch, hungry, lean-faced
villain
mere anatomy a mountebank
threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller.
A needy. hollow-eyed. sharp-looking wretch,
living dead man; this perncious slave;
Forsooth. took him a conjurer,
And. gazing in mine eyes, feeling my pulse
And with no face, 'twere. outfacing me,
Cries out. 1 was possessed.
More important, however than the
scenes and passages to which reference
has been made is the Intervening of the
tragic and comic elements of the play
Shakespeare departs from his original.
the "Menoechmi" of Plautus, in intro
ducing the pathos of the stories of Aegeon
and Aemilia, and the breaking up of their
family; there is always significance in the
departures that Shakespeare makes from
his original AS Swinburne SAYS "What
is due to Shakespeare and to him alone
is the honor of having embroidered on the
naked old canvas of comic acting those
flowers of eegiac beauty which vivify
and diversity the scenes of PIautus" One
feels the contrast between the words of
the Dromios or DR.. Pinch and these sad
words of Aegeon upon not being recog-
niZed by his son-words that have in them
a suggestion of Lear's passion:
Not know my voice! Oh times extremity.
Hast thou cracked and splitted my poor
tongue
In seven short years that here my only son
Knows not my feeble key of untuned cares?
Though this grained face of mine be hid
In sap-consumng winters drizzled snow
And all the conduits of my flood froze up
Yet hath my night of life some memory,
My wasting lamps some fading gmmer left,
My duh little use 10 hear;
All these old Witnesses cannot err
Tell thou art my Antpholus
Yes, he is already something more than
the mere humorist, and something more
than the mere classic dramatist obeying
the laws Of unity of the classic drama
From the comic writer. pure and simple.
we should not have had the first and last
scenes, and the undertone of sadness that
may be heard in the words of the more
serious Antipholus of Syracuse. From the
classic dramatist we should have ex-
pected the strict obedience to the laws
of dramatic unity found in this play. but
not the blending of humor and pathos.
so characteristic of the romantic drama.
From this point Of view the Comedy of
Errors may be regarded the nnal triumph
of the romantic drama over its opponents:
IL 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 q