Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/262

 the plays from writers who had not yet been translated. In the "Taming of the Shrew," iii. 7, there is one from Ovid's Epistles. If Bacon wrote the play, we may suppose that he quoted directly from Ovid. Then why, in Act i. 1 of the same play, did he not quote a Latin line directly from Terence, instead of taking it from Lily's Grammar where the quotation is not correct? And suppose Shakspeare never did nor could read Ovid: it was easy enough for him to pick up those two lines for the fun in iii. 1, even if we reject the opinion that attributes large portions of an earlier form of the play to Marlowe. If Shakspeare only knew Latin through Lily's Grammar, he might have taken Terence from it; but Bacon's scholarship was above that.

A large part of the plot of the "Comedy of Errors" was drawn from the Menæchmi of Plautus, a play which Bacon frequently quotes. On the supposition that Shakspeare was unacquainted with it, we easily account for his knowledge of the plot. A previous play, called the "Historie of Error," acted in 1577, was derived from the same comedy of Plautus; and William Warner's translation of it was freely handed about in manuscript for some time before the appearance of the "Comedy of Errors," though it was not entered at Stationers Hall till June, 1594.

There is a curious parallelism between the fourth scene of Act iv. of the "Winter's Tale," where Perdita shows her tender knowledge of flowers, and Bacon's