The San Francisco call., 1899-11-02

and witchcraftI To Shakespeare belongs
wholly the serious background, from
which the farcical incidents stand out in
relief-the story of the Syracusan mer-
chant who almost forfeits his life in the
search for his lost children, and finally
recovers both the lost ones and his own
liberty.
4. DR.. Dowden points out the following
lines as among the most beautiful in the
play. But" he adds, "such passages, in
which character or human passion rather
than incident chiefly interests US, are
rare" The old man, a prisoner before
the duke, finds that his son does not rec
ognize his face nor remember his voice:
Aegeon-why look you strange on me? You
know me we'll.
Antipholus Of Ell never saw you in my
Aegeon-o grief hath changd me since you
last,
And careful hours with times deformed hand
Have written strange defeatures in my face;
But tell me yet dost thou not know my voice
Antipholus of E.-Neither
Aegeon-Dromio, nor thou?
Dromio of E.-No, trust me, sir, nor l.
Aegeon-I sure thou dost.
Dromio of E-Ay, sir, but l l do
not; and wha.-oever a man denies, you are
now bound to believe him.
Aeseoh-Not KNOW my voice! - time eH-
trenlity.
Hast thou crack'd and splitted my poor
tongue
In seven short years that here my only son
Knows not my feeble key of untun'd cares?
Though now this grained face of mine be hid
In sap-consuming winters drizzled snow.
And all the oonduits of my blood froZe up,
Yet hath my night of Lie some memory,
My wasting lamps some fading glimmer left.
My dull deaf ears little to hear.
All these old witnesses.-I cannot err
Tell thou art my son Antipholus
Antipholus OF Ell never saw my father in
my life.
Aegeon-But seven years since, in Syracuse,
boy,
Thou knows we parted; but perhaps, my son,
Thou sham'st to acknowledge me in misery.
s 1.-The Comedy of Errors" was PLAYED
on the evening of Innocents' day Dec
2S), 1894, in the hall of Gray's Inn, before
a crowded audience of benchers, students
and their friends. There was some dis
turbance during the evening on the part
of the guests from the Inner Temple,
who, dissatisfied with the accommodation
afforded them, retired in dudgeon 80
that night" the contemporary chrenicler
states, was begun and continued to the
end in nothing but confusion and errors,
whereupon it was afterward called the
acting on the same day before the queen
at Greenwich, and it is doubtful If ne
were present. On the morrow commits
sion of oyer and terminer inquired into
the causes of the tumult, which was at
tributed to a sorcerer having "foisted a
company of base and common fellows to
make up cur disorders with a play of err
rors and confusions." A second perform
ance of the Comedy of Errors was
given at Gray's Inn hall by the Eliza
bethan Stage Society on December s,
1595.-Sidney Lee.
6. In the plot thus carefully composed
there are at least two features worth our
notice. The first, at which we need merely
glance, is the vigorous effect of dramatic
contrast produced by beginning this pro-
longed farce with the romantic narrative
of Aegons shipwreck and misfortunes and
wanderings, and by ending 1T with the
still more romantic discovery that the
abbess of Ephesus is the long-lost wife
whom he has so faithfully mourned. The
second is the fundamental source of all
the fun and trouble-the elaborate, double
confusion of identity Wendell.
Georg Brandes' Estimate of the Play
This comedy on the frontier line Of
farce shows with what giant strides
Shakespeare progresses in the technique
of his art 1t has the blood of the theater
in its veins. We can already discern the
experienced actor in the dexterity with
which the threads of the intrigue are in
voved, and woven into an evermore in
tricate tangle. until the simple solution Is
arrived at While Loves Labor's Lost
still dragged itself laboriously over the
board, here we have an impetus and
brio in all the dramatic passages which
reveal an artist and foretell a master
Only the rough outlines of the play are
taken from Plautus; and the motive, the
possibility of incessant confusion between
two masters and two servants, is manin.
ulated with skill and certainty which
astound us in beginner, and sometimes
with quite irresistible whimsicality. No
doubt the merry play is founded upon an
extreme improbability. So exact is the
mutual resemblance of each pair of twins
no less in clothing than in feature that
not single person for a moment doubts
their identity. Astonishing resemblances
between twins do, however, occur in real