The Comedy of Errors Can Be Dated Between

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Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Comedy of Errors

The Comedie of Errors

he Comedy of Errors can be dated between in 1688) contains an account of the revels at 1566, the date of its latest source, and Gray’s Inn during the 1594 Christmas season; for 1594 when it was performed at Gray’s Inn. the finale to a night of entertainment and uproar T on 28 December:

a Comedy of Errors (like to Plautus his Publication Date Menechmus) was played by the Players.

The Comedy of Errorsis one of eighteen plays in In 1604, exactly ten years later to the day, it F1 which had not previously been published. was played as part of the Christmas festivities at It was entered into the Stationers’ Register on Court, ‘[b]y his Maiesties plaiers. On Inosents 8 November 1623 alongside other plays as “not Night The Plaie of Errors. Shaxberd’ [Revels]. No formerly entred to other men”: other production is known before 1716. The play is apparently mentioned by Meres in Mr Blounte Isaak Jaggard. Entered for Palladis Tamia in 1598: their Copie vnder the hands of Mr Doctor Worral and Mr Cole – warden, Mr William As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best Shakspeers Comedyes Histories, and for Comedy and Tragedy among the Latines: Tragedyes soe manie of the said Copies as so Shakespeare among y’ English is the most are not formerly entered to other men. vizt. excellent in both kinds for the stage; for Comedyes. The Tempest. The two gentlemen Comedy, witnes his Ge’tleme’ of Verona, his of Verona. Measure for Measure. The Comedy Errors, . . . of Errors. As you Like it. All’s well that ends well. Twelft night. The winters tale. Histories. As the play had not yet been published, Meres The thirde parte of Henry the sixt. Henry the eight. Coriolanus. Timon of Athens. Julius is assumed either to have seen the play in Caesar. Tragedies. Mackbeth. Anthonie & performance or perhaps heard of it through a Cleopatra. Cymbeline. ‘court insider’ such as Anthony Munday. Sources It occupies the fifth position in the Comedies, coming after Measure for Measure and before Bullough states that the play is largely based on Much Ado About Nothing. It is the shortest play in the work of the Roman dramatist, Plautus. His the canon at about 1700 lines. Menaechmi was published in numerous editions in the sixteenth century, in its original Latin. The Performance Dates comedy arises from the embarrassment of a man searching for his long-lost twin brother, whose There is one contemporary record of a sixteenth- intimate acquaintances mistake each for the other. century performance of what is taken to be The Shakespeare adds to the confusion and slapstick Comedy of Errors. The Gesta Grayorum (printed by giving each twin the same name (Antipholus),

© De Vere Society 1 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Comedy of Errors and by having as their servants another set of long- Internal Orthodox Evidence lost twins – who also share a name (Dromio). The play seems to have been composed before the The interpretation of internal evidence for dating publication of the first English translation of the the play is varied. The key passage occurs in 3.2. Menaechmi in 1595.1 125–7: One episode in Shakespeare’s play (in which the wife of one twin bars him from his own house Syr. Antipholus. Where France? where she is entertaining his brother, believing Syr. Dromio In her forehead, armed him to be her husband) appears to be based on and reverted, making war another play by Plautus, Amphitruo. As Bullough against her heir. has also pointed out, two strands of the play seem This is generally recognised as a reference to the to be based on the story of Apollonius of Tyre, civil war in France between Henri of Navarre and as told by John Gower in his Confessio Amantis the Catholic League. The war broke out in 1589 on (1393): the serious opening scene (where Egeon, the death of Henri III and ended when Henri IV father of the Antipholus twins, is under threat (as Navarre now was) re-converted to Catholicism of death) and the surprising final resolution.2 in July 1593. These dates appear to define a Gower’s work had been widely published, e.g. by four-year period within which the reference was Caxton in 1483 and by Berthelette in 1532. topically accurate, and within which, therefore, Bullough also mentions similarities with the play must have been written. Quiller-Couch incidents in Secchi’s Gl’lnganni of 1549, an Italian (1968:xiii) and Dorsch (2004:39) tentatively go play in the ‘commedia erudita tradition’, not further and suggest the precise date of 1591 when available in English. Gl’lnganni (‘The Deceits’) two English expeditions were sent to France to was also used for Twelfth Night). Foakes (intro support Navarre. xxxii–iv) develops further connections with Unfortunately, matters are not so clear-cut. Gascoigne’s Supposes of 1566 also performed at Henri IV himself, writing in 1589, asserts: “This Gray’s Inn. The Supposes, a translation of Ariosto’s foure yeares space I have beene ... the subject of I Suppositi (1509), is the latest source for The civile armes.” Foakes (intro, page xx) reports that Taming of the Shrew. his letter was immediately translated into English. As late as 1597 English writers were referring to Orthodox Date the civil war as still in progress (1593 marking no more than a truce) and the Edict of Nantes finally The date assigned to the play ranges from 1584– ended forty years of religious conflict in 1598. 1594. Chambers places it on stylistic and other Foakes concludes (intro, xxi) that the evidence grounds as the earliest comedy, 1592–3. Orthodox of the quotation is consequently unreliable: “The scholars concur that this short play is one of the allusion could have made its point at any time in writer’s earliest, but there is much uncertainty the decade after 1585.” and disagreement over what `early’ is. Estimates A similar question very soon afterwards in of the most likely date of writing range from the dialogue produces in Dromio’s answer: “The 1584–9 (Alexander), up to 1589 (Cairncross), hot breath of Spain, who sent whole armadoes through 1589 (Baldwin, Honigmann), 1588–92 of carracks” (3.2.139–41). This ‘hot breath’ was (Mangan), 1591 (Dorsch), 1591–2 (Quiller- interpreted, by the successive Cambridge editors, Couch), 1590–93 (Foakes) to 1592–94 (Wells & as an allusion to the recent – for 1591 – defeat of Taylor). Whitworth, following Wells & Taylor’s the Spanish Armada in 1588 (Quiller Couch, intro stylistic tests, prefers 1594. Wiggins dates this xiii). Other commentators think it could allude play to 1592. Some scholars think it an apprentice to the Great Carrack, a huge Portuguese galleon piece, perhaps Shakespeare’s first play, but others captured and brought to England in September consider it more competent, therefore later, than 1592 (Foakes, xix). Dromio’s answer is similarly The Two Gentlemen of Veronaand The Taming of vague and capable of various interpretations. the Shrew.

External Orthodox Evidence to Navarre’s status, from the protestant viewpoint, Henri of Navarre was ‘heir’ from June 1584 to The play must have been written by 1598, when August 1589. Moore argues that this would have Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia was published. been an important matter of detail and principle It refers to “his Errors” as one of Shakespeare’s for a protestant English audience, who had plays, and as part of the proof of his excellence common cause with Henri of Navarre. Further in comedy. The record in the Gesta Grayorum is weighty considerations in these circumstances strong evidence that the play was in existence at would have been Philip of Spain’s support of the least four years earlier. ultra-Catholics in both England and France, and papal interference in the politics of both countries. Oxfordian Date So the dates when the ‘heir’ of France was at war provide a clearly defined period to corroborate Clark proposed 1577. Charlton Ogburn Jr concurs Moore’s 1587–8 dating of the play. with this date. Moore, however, suggests 1587–8 Commentators have noted the density of for the key development of the play as we know legal terminology in The Comedy of Errors. it in the 1623 text; Hess et al., following Moore, Fripp found 150 examples of legal terms, many favour 1587. highly technical. Dorsch notes about a dozen of them in the first scene – more than dramatically Internal Oxfordian Evidence necessary. This language, of course, would appeal to an audience with legal training. Sams, who Moore adopts a different interpretation of ‘heir’ in refers to Fripp’s researches, finds such language to the crucial reference to Henri of Navarre (3.2.127), be evidence for the speculation that Shakespeare emphasising that it is highly significant that the had been a lawyer’s clerk – one of the many jobs word is not ‘king’. He points out that Henri that have been proposed for him during the ‘lost’ of Navarre, though a protestant convert, was years up to the early 1590s. Oxford was admitted technically heir to the French throne from June to Gray’s Inn on 1 February 1567 (Nelson, 46) 1584 when, on the death of the Duc d’Alençon, and in 1570 the Inn purchased his coat-of-arms. Henri III acknowledged him as his legal successor, Although he is not known to have bought legal “my sole and only heir”. A year later, under books – his tastes were literary – Oxford spent pressure from the Guise-led Catholic League, most of his life dealing with legal problems and which recognised the Cardinal de Bourbon as lawyers, so there can be no uncertainty about his heir presumptive, Henri III (illegally) removed familiarity with the law (Nelson, 46). Navarre from the succession; soon afterwards Another feature of the play, which has a the War of the Three Henris (France, Guise and direct bearing on the dating, is the influence of Navarre) broke out. However, by the summer of John Lyly. The name Dromio occurs in Mother 1589, Henri III and Navarre were allies. This is Bombie, registered on 18 June 1594 and printed the “foure yeares space ... of civile armes” that that year, but acted (probably) in 1590. This Navarre mentioned in his 1589 letter. play has two pairs of changeling children, four Leonie Frieda (384–5) describes how, on 1 servants, four old men and three pairs of lovers. August, Henri III was seriously wounded by an Foakes (intro, xxxiii) lists seven phrases or images assailant and lost no time in summoning Navarre in Mother Bombie “which recur or are echoed in to his bedside. Before he died, he appointed Henri Shakespeare’s play.” Lyly’s wider influence is felt, of Navarre his successor and made his officers and according to Foakes, in the tone of much of the nobles pledge their allegiance to the man who dialogue, particularly that between servant and would soon be their new king. Although the master. By 1579, Lyly was Oxford’s secretary League proclaimed their aged cardinal as Charles and he was his theatre manager during the 1580s X, and it took Henri IV over four years to establish (Nelson, 182–3; 238–9). It is more logical to see his de facto rule over the whole of France (finally the Lyly plays and The Comedy of Errors coming entering Paris in 1594), Navarre had become king from a common source and sharing a ‘house of France on 2 August 1589. style’ in the 1580s, than to imagine Shakespeare Whatever the differing catholic attitudes were of Stratford either familiarising himself with

© De Vere Society 3 Dating Shakespeare’s Plays: The Comedy of Errors unpublished court plays before he arrived in Italian well.” So we need make no assumptions London or imitating an earlier style in the mid- about Oxford’s ability to read Plautus in the 1590s. original language, and he had no need to wait for the 1594 translation before writing his own play. External Oxfordian evidence Clark’s suggestion of 1577 for the play’s origins is possible for Oxford. At the age of 26, he would Clark found brief entries of eleven plays in the have been a developing playwright, penning a Court records of the late 1570s; the texts have `late’ early comedy, and (as we have seen) fully not survived and no authors were named. She at ease with the Latin source material. One can surmises that some of these plays were written by reasonably propose that the end of the 1570s is a Oxford, then in his mid-twenties, for performance likely period for the play’s original version, with at Court, and that they were later rewritten and major expansions and revisions up to ten years expanded for public performance, to become later, resulting in a version of the play close to, if plays we know in the Shakespeare canon. The not indeed the same as, the one we have now. first of these listed plays, The historie of Error,was performed at Hampton Court, by the `Children Conclusion of Powle’s’, on the night of 1 January 1577. Clark conjectures that this was the earliest version of The Comedy of Errorscan be dated after 1566, The Comedy of Errors.3 the date of its latest source. The play was written, Ogburn Jr accepts Clark’s conjecture and known and attributed to Shakespeare by 1598, thinks, on stylistic grounds (he mentions its but 1594 gives us the date of a performance at `doggerel verse’), that The Comedy of Errorsis Gray’s Inn of what is generally supposed to be The one of the earliest plays. Hess et al. acknowledge Comedy of Errors. It by no means follows that this Clark’s inferences about the early Errors play, was the first performance, or that the play had but favour Moore’s interpretation of the internal only just been composed. evidence and, therefore, his 1587 date. The main source of the play, Plautus’ Notes Menaechmi, was available only in Latin editions until 1595. Orthodox scholars have to assume that Thanks are due to Sally Hazelton for many useful Shakespeare’s grammar-school Latin (another suggestions. undocumented assumption) made him sufficiently 1. Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition: Greek “well-equipped to read in the language” (Foakes). and Roman Influences on Western Literature (1949: 624–5) states that for The Comedy of Alternatively, Foakes speculates, “it is possible that Errors, Shakespeare must have read Plautus’s Shakespeare had seen the first English translation Amphytruo in Latin as there was no available of Menaechmi, made by William Warner [but see translation. Similarly, the dramatist read note 1] and published in 1595.” The timing is rather Plautus’ Mostellaria in Latin for The Taming awkward, considering that the latest orthodox of the Shrew so he would probably have read date of writing is 1594, so Foakes conjures up a the Menaechmi in Latin as well. Highet notes: further assumption: “The translation was entered “The only known translation of the Menaechmi in the Stationers’ Register on 10 June 1594 and was published in 1595 by Thomas Creede and attributed to W. W. who may have been presumably had circulated earlier in manuscript.” William Warner. The publisher in his forward The reader is left to supply yet another assumption: says that W. W. had translated several plays of that somehow Shakespeare was one of W.W.’s Plautus “for the use and delight of his private friends and came across this manuscript version. friends, who in Plautus owne words are not Oxford’s aristocratic education gave him a very able to understand them’ and that he himself solid grounding in Latin. Indeed, Orazio Cuoco,4 had prevailed on W.W. to publish this one.” the Venetian teenage chorister who was Oxford’s Highet further notes that Shakespeare’s play page from 1575 to early 1577 in both Venice and does not appear to echo the wording of W. W.’s London, testified to the Venetian Inquisition, translation, which is reprinted in Bullough, I, 12–39. when he returned to his native city in August 1577, 2. Whitworth (2003: 27–37) has an in-depth that Oxford “was a person who spoke Latin and account of the plot details which might have

derived from various stories about Apollonius Shakespeare, vol. 1, London: Routledge & available at the time, namely its appearance in Keegan Paul, 1957 Gower’s Confessio Amantis, but also in a later Cairncross, A. S., The Problem of Hamlet: A Solution, prose version by Laurence Twine, entitled London: Macmillan, 1936 the Pattern of Painefull Adventures (1608). Chambers, E. K., The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols, Whitworth proposes that Shakespeare’s use of Oxford: Clarendon, 1923 the Apollonius tale is more likely to have derived Chambers, E. K., William Shakespeare, A Study of from Twine’s version. There were two parallel Facts and Problems, Oxford: Clarendon, 1930 paths of transmission for the tale. Gower’s Clark, E. T., Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays, Confession derives from a twelfth-century Port Washington: Minos, 1974 version in Godfrey of Viterbo’s Pantheon, while Dorsch, T. S. (ed.), The Comedy of Errors,, Cambridge: Twine’s Pattern includes details from the telling New Cambridge, 1988 in the Latin Gesta Romanorum, a popular Foakes, R. A. (ed.), The Comedy of Errors,, London: fourteenth-century compilation of legends. Arden, 1962 Certain of these details transmit to Errors, Freeman, Arthur (ed.), Palladis Tamia reprint Garland, see Archibald, 1991. Whitworth makes his New York, 1973. selection of Twine partly on the basis of its more Frieda, L., Catherine de Medici, London: Phoenix, recent dating. Pattern was registered in the S.R. 2003 in 1576 with a first edition possibly published Fripp, Edgar, Minutes and Accounts of the Corporation before 1594. However, an edition of Confessio of Stratford-upon-Avon and other records, 1553– was issued much earlier, in 1554, leaving 1620, Oxford: OUP, 1924 what is for Whitworth an uncomfortable gap Hess, W. R. et al., “Shakespeare’s Dates”, The of forty years between the publication of the Oxfordian, 2, Portland, 1999 source and the writing of the play. This would Honigmann, E. A. J., Shakespeare: the ‘lost years’, be “a departure from [Shakespeare’s] normal Manchester University Press, 1985 practice of using very recently published Mangan, M., A Preface to Shakespeare’s Comedies, works... as sources” (2003: 28). Again, the London: Longman, 1996 difficult interrelation of conflicting hypotheses Matus, I., Shakespeare, in fact, , New York: Continuum, and those compositional behaviours taken as 1994 characteristic of Shakespeare’s process and Moore, P., “The Abysm of Time: the Chronology of position is apparent at every stage. Shakespeare’s Plays”, Elizabethan Review, 5.2, 3. For The historie of Error, see Chambers, ES, vol IV, 1997 93. The possible connection between the plays Nelson, A. H., Monstrous Adversary, Liverpool was also noted by Highet (cited in a previous University Press, 2003 note). From the same period, Clark proposes Ogburn, C., The Mysterious William Shakespeare, that The Solitary Knight played on 17 Feb. 1577 New York: Dodd Mead, 1984 was an early version of Timon of Athens and Quiller-Couch, A. and J. D. Wilson (eds), The Comedy that Titus and Gisippus played on 19 Feb. 1577 of Errors, 2nd ed, Cambridge University, 1968 was an early version of The Two Noble Kinsmen. Sams, E., The Real Shakespeare,Yale University Press, 4. Nelson gives the detailed testimony, 155–7, but 1997 mistakenly transcribes the surname as Coquo. Ward, B. M., The Seventeenth Earl of Oxford, London: John Murray, 1928 rptd 1979. Wells, Stanley and Gary Taylor (eds), The Complete Other Cited Works Oxford Shakespeare, Oxford, 1986 — (eds), William Shakespeare: a textual companion, Alexander. P. (ed.), William Shakespeare: Complete Oxford, 1987 Works, London: Collins, 1951 Whitworth, Charles (ed.), The Comedy of Errors, Anderson, Mark, Shakespeare by Another Name, New Oxford: OUP, 2003. York: Gotham 2005 Wiggins, Martin (ed.) British Drama 1533–1642: Archibald, E., Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and A Catalogue. Volume III 1590–1597. Oxford, Renaissance Themes and Variations,Cambridge: OUP, 2013/ D. S. Brewer, 1991 Baldwin, T. W., On the Compositional Genetics of ‘The Comedy of Errors’, University of Illinois, 1965 Bland, David (ed.), Gesta Grayorum, (1688), English Reprints Series 22, Liverpool University Press, 1968: 29–33 Bullough, G., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of