The Evolution of the Comedy of Errors

Abstract

Gradually the mists veiling Shakespeare's dramatic production prior to the year 1594 are thinning, and we are enabled with clearer vision to isolate his early steps in play-writing and study his development in artistry. We are becoming more keenly sensible of the fact that his earliest plays in their present form have a false aspect of maturity. On the basis of internal allusions, Professor Charlton would place the Love's Labour's Lost so late as the autumn of 1592; and to the duplications in the text of the same play clearly illustrating Shakespeare's method of amplifying and remodeling, Professor H. D. Gray has added other considerations in an attempt to reconstruct its first form, from which he would entirely eliminate the characters of Sir Nathaniel and Holofernes. Over a decade ago Dr. Tucker Brooke recognized the fact that 1 Henry VI underwent some revision as late as 1599, and pointed out that in 2 and 3 Henry VI the dramatic strength is largely that of Marlowe. Mr. J. M. Robertson has recently renewed the attack upon the problem of Richard III. Professor Pollard's new angle of approach to the history of the texts in the First Folio and the quartos has had fruitful results in the invaluable studies of the editors of the New Cambridge edition, revealing, among other disclosures, an extremely immature Midsummer-night's Dream of 1592 or earlier. Professor Adams, in his new Life of Shakespeare, has discussed the probable significance of the plague years, 1592-93, in the poet's intellectual development. Students of Shakespeare are thus enabled to clarify, and partly to reconstruct, their conceptions of his mentality and professional production in the years 1590-94. We no longer need to assume that Shakespeare came to London in 1586 or 1587 in order to account for his apparent professional maturity in 1591-92; nor do we need to thrust the original form of 1 Henry VI back to 1589 or earlier under the assumption that Shakespeare's connection with a work so immature in parts as the present 1 Henry VI cannot be later than Henslowe's entry of harey the vj in March, 1592.