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358 NOTES TO THE COM. OF ERRORS.

the entire play was no work of his, is an opinion which (as Benedick says)" fire cannot melt out of me; I will die in it at the stake."

In this comedy we find more intricacy of plot than distinction of character; and our attention is less forcibly engaged, because we can guess in great measure how the denouement will be brought about. Yet the subject appears to have been reluctantly dismissed, even in shis last and unnecessary scene, where the same mistakes are continued, till their power of affording entertainment is entirely lost. STEEVENS,

The long doggrel verses that Shakspeare has attributed in this play to the two Dromios, are written in that kind of metre which was usually attributed by the dramatick poets hefore his time, in their comick pieces, to some of their inferior characters; and this circumstance is one of many that authorize us to place the preceding comedy, as well as Love's Labour's Lost, and The Taming of the Shrew, (where the same kind of versification is likewise found,) among our author's earliest productions; composed probably at a time when he was imperceptibly infected with the prevailing mode, and before he had completely learned “to deviate boldly from the common track." MALONE.

END OF THE SEVENTH VOLUME,

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