Page:The Plays of William Shakspeare (1778).djvu/308

[ 292 ] that there is nothing in which he is les accurate, than the computation of time. Of his negligence in this repect, As you Like It, The Merry Wives of Windor, Meaure for Meaure, and Othello, furnih remarkable intances. .

In a tract written br Thomas Decker, entitled Newes from Hell brought by the Devil’s Carrier, 1606, there eems to be an alluion to this comedy: “ his ignorance (ariing from his blindnes) is the only caue of this Comedie of Errors.” This play was neither entered on the Stationers’ books, nor printed, till l623, but is mentioned by Meres in 1598; and exhibits internal proofs of having been an early production. It could not, however, have been written before 1596; for the tranlation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, from which the plot was taken, was not publihed till 1595.

The tragedy of Hamlet was not regitered in the books of the Stationers’ company till the 26th of July 1602, nor printed till 1604. This circumtance, and indeed the general air of the play itelf, which has not, it mut he owned, the appearance of an early composition, might induce us to clas it five or ix years later than 1596, were we not overpowered by the proof adduced by Dr. Farmer, and by other circumtances, from which it appears to have been acted in, or before, that year. The piece, however, which was then exhibited, was probablv but a rude ketch of that which we now poSS undefinedes; for from the title page of the firt edition, in 1604, we learn, that (like Romeo and Juliet, and the