not at all wish to maintain that these more philosophical than poetical considerations-although in my opinion they are not very different--were the directly conscious motives that induced the young poet to choose the subject, and that guided him in its development. But I do believe that his innate appreciation for the beautiful, his fine feeling for unity and harmony, or, in other words, that a genial instinct (it may be unconsciously) compelled him to make the attempt even to outdo Plautus' Comedy of Errors,' by introducing a second and exactly similar pair of twins; by this means, as well as by a number of secondary motives, he was able to carry the errors and confusion to the highest possible pitch, and to make them affect all the circumstances and relations of life. It is only by means of this exaggeration that the subject obtains that deeper significance already alluded to, and thereby a central point which gives unity to the confused variety of persons, scenes, relations and incidents, and which holds all the several parts together. Of course, is such a state of things, it could not be devoid of improbabilities, devoid of strange occurrences and wonderful coincidences. But Shakspeare, by the very foundation which he has given to the whole -the romantic history of the family Egeon, and the distant, foreign locality which he makes the scene of his play-has taken care that common reality is removed from our sight, and has given us to understand that the question here does not concern this world, but a free, poetical creation, the picture of life, so to say, in the mirror of an unbridled fancy. It is only in the mirror of fancy that life could appear so perfectly dependent upon external form and sensuous observation; only within the comic view of life that this conception could be right; only when regarded from the one point of view, from the comic side, that it could appear so. For, true as it is that life is thus dependent, still it is not true that life is merely and wholly dependent upon sensuous experience; it is not true that human knowledge is only sensuous, a perception dependent on the eye and ear. The one-sidedness of the conception, therefore, contains within itself its own corrective; error' in the end destroys itself, and a scene of general recognition brings everything into order and into the right groove. We see that 'error' may indeed, as it were, momentarily take entire hold of life, but must ultimately give way to truth, which eventually not only carries off the victory, but also leads us out of the darkness of delusion and confusion to where we recover the good which had long been missed and sought for in vain. This is my reason for having placed 'The Comedy of Errors' among the comedies of fancy; I have also called it the pendant or companion piece to As You Like It,' because I consider that it is not merely fantastic in character, but that it is also internally related to As You Like It.' For, as in the latter case, waywardness and caprice, the unreasonableness and inconsistency of will and action are represented as the dominant principles of life, here it is error, the unreasonableness and inconsistency of thinking and recognition. The caprice of action is, however, the correlative, the obverse of the error of recognition; both, in fact, exist only in the separation and aberration of the mind from the given reality. Both appear unfounded because they have no objective but merely a subjective basis, and for this very reason both belong to the idea of contingency, inasmuch as the latter, of course, consists only of apparent unreasonableness, of mere want of knowledge, and hence only of an apparent destruction of the necessary and general causal-nexus. Both, however, differ from one another in so far as caprice, as such, is voluntarily independent of external influences, error, on the other hand, involuntarily dependent upon circumstances and relations. For this very reason, in 'As You Like It,' the power of outward contingency is kept in the background, whereas in The Comedy of Errors' it is prominently brought forward. This is here at or.ce manifest by the whole plan of the piece, which is founded upon the accidental separation of the father and mother, as well as of the two pairs of twins, by the shipwreck; likewise, all the subsequent complications proceed from the play of chance which reunites the separated family in Ephesus, and perpetually brings the father, the wife, and the servant, the friends and the acquaintances into collision with the wrong Antipholus and the wrong Dromio. The internal, as well as the external matters of chance belong, however, to the fantastic view of life; they are the essential elements and motives in the fantastic comedy. For both alike undermine reality, which naturally rests upon the necessity of the connection between cause and effect, and disappears in the chequered and irregular play of caprice and fancy. The circumstance that in The Comedy of Errors,' as well as in the two pieces just discussed, we find the characters sketched in but light touches, and not actually developed or fully worked out, is in perfect accordance with the conception of the fantastic comedy. For life cannot be represented in its fantastic freedom at all, unless it clothes the mind and characters of the dramatic personages in the same colouring. A character is fantastic principally by the fact that it lacks determinateness and firmness, as well as steadiness and consistency of development. 3. THE WINTER'S TALE. Another pendant to 'As You Like It' is formed by 'The Winter's Tale.' The subject of this piece must be specially recalled to the reader's mind, as here everything depends upon a clear understanding of the complicated threads of the dramatic texture. King Leontes of Sicilia, irritated by some trifling imprudencies on the part of his wife, is in a violent state of jealousy with his present guest and friend, King Polixenes of Bohemia. The integrity of a confidant, Camillo, whom Leontes intended to make the instrument of his revenge, enables Polixenes to escape from the designs made upon him. The Queen, however, he causes to be cast into prison, and the little daughter to whom she there gives birth is ordered to be exposed. The oracle declares the Queen to be innocent, and at the same time says that the throne of Sicilia shall be without an heir till the recovery of the exposed child. Simultaneously with this comes the intelligence of the death of the Crown Prince, upon hearing which the Queen falls down in an apparently lifeless state. This concludes the first three acts. The fourth, which opens with a prologue, is supposed to begin sixteen years afterwards. The son of the King of Bohemia becomes enamoured of the beautiful Princess who has been brought up among shepherds. She had been exposed on the shores of Bohemia, and could not be recovered because those who had carried out the father's orders had perished before their return to Sicilia. The girl, therefore, was generally looked upon as the child of an old shepherd. The King of Bohemia, enraged at his son's attachment to the supposed shepherdess, purposes to compel him to break it off, but the Prince, following the advice of Camillo, and in order to elude his father's violence, flies with his beloved to King Leontes in Sicilia; the latter, in the meantime, has, in deep sorrow and contrition repented of his wrongdoings. Polixenes sends out in pursuit of his son, and by all kinds of strange coincidences, the foster-father of the Princess and his son are also brought to Sicilia. Here the whole affair is cleared up by certain marks being found upon the Princess which were known to have existed on the child that had been exposed. The Queen of Sicilia, also, who had been supposed to be dead, comes forth from her concealment and the play concludes in a tumult of joy and rejoicing. The subject is borrowed from Robert Greene's pastoral romance: 'Pandosto, the Triumph of Time' (1588), which was subsequently altered in various ways and then appeared under the title of 'A Pleasant History of Dorastus and Fawnia.' But Shakspeare, besides making several deviations and additions, has changed Greene's somewhat affected story (which was merely suited to the taste of his own day) into one of his fairytale-like, fantastic dramas, the propriety of which for the stage may be questioned, but the poetical value of which is undeniable.† * It is easily seen that here, in contrast to 'As You Like It,' the general foundation and plan of the whole-the jealousy of Leontes, the exposure of the infant, the seclu * In Greene's tale, Hermione-Bellaria really dies; Leontes-Pandosto falls in love with his own daughter, and is finally seized by a kind of melancholy, in which he kills himself. The characters of Antigonus, Paulina, and Autolycus are entirely wanting. + Greene's tale in the original will be found in Collier's Shakespeare's Library, vol. i., and has been translated into German by Sirock, Quellen des Shakspeare in Novellen, Märchen und Sagen, ii 19 ff. ex sion of the Queen and the repentance of her husband, the young Prince's love for the exceedingly beautiful shepherdess, etc.-although unusual, are nevertheless in accordance with reality; the characters, also, are consistently developed, without sudden changes and psychological improbabilities. Individual features, however, are all the more fantastic. We have here the full sway of accident and caprice in the concatination of events, circumstances and relations; everything is removed from common perience. Not only is Delphos spoken of as an 'island' and Bohemia as a maritime country (local reality, therefore, disregarded), but the reality of time also is completely set aside, inasmuch as the Delphic oracle is made to exist contemporaneously with Russian emperors and the great painter Julio Romano; in fact, the heroic age and the times of chivalry, the ancient customs of mythical religion, and Christianity with its institutions are brought together sans cérémonie. It is a matter of accident that the death of the Crown Prince is announced simultaneously with the utterance of the oracle, and that the condition of the Queen appears like actual death. It is purely an accident that the babe is saved at the very moment that the nobleman who exposed it is torn to pieces by a bear, and that his ship, with all on board, is lost, so that no tidings could be carried back to Sicilia. It is mere accident that the young Prince of Bohemia strays into woods and meets the shepherds with whom the Princess is living. In the end similar freaks of chance repair the results of the first accidents, bring all the dramatic personages together in Sicilia, put everything into its proper order, and bring about a happy conclusion. As, therefore, the unreal, the fantastic is here expressed in individual features ather than in the general fundamental relations of the play, so it is also more the interaction of external matters of chance that govern the whole and solve the contradiction of opinions and intentions, of deeds and events; thus, in spite of all the apparent impossibilities, that which is rational and right is ultimately brought about. It is just this sovereignty of eternal contingency, however, that gives the play the character of a tale and ite |