hnson's
Edition.

"Besides the resemblance of particular passages scattered up and down in
different plays, it is well known that the _Comedy of Errors_ is in great
measure founded on the _Menaechmi_ of Plautus; but I do not recollect ever
to have seen it observed that the disguise of the _Pedant_ in the _Taming
of the Shrew_, and his assuming the name and character of _Vincentio_,
seem to be evidently taken from the disguise of the _Sycophanta_ in the
_Trinummus_ of the said Author; and there is a quotation from the _Eunuch_
of Terence also, so familiarly introduced into the Dialogue of the _Taming
of the Shrew_, that I think it puts the question of Shakespeare's having
read the Roman Comick Poets in the _original_ language out of all doubt,

Redime te captum, quam queas, minimo."

With respect to _resemblances_, I shall not trouble you any further.--That
the _Comedy of Errors_ is founded on the _Menaechmi_, it is notorious: nor
is it less so, that a Translation of it by W. W., perhaps William Warner,
the Author of _Albion's England_, was extant in the time of Shakespeare;
tho' Mr. Upton, and some other advocates for his learning, have cautiously
dropt the mention of it. Besides this (if indeed it were different), in
the _Gesta Grayorum_, the Christmas Revels of the Gray's-Inn Gentlemen,
1594, "a _Comedy of Errors_ like to Plautus his _Menechmus_ was played by
the Players." And the same hath been suspected to be the Subject of the
_goodlie Comedie of Plautus_ acted at Greenwich before the King and Queen
in 1520; as we learn from Hall and Holingshed:--Riccoboni highly
compliments the English on opening their stage so well; but unfortunately
Cavendish, in his _Life of Wolsey_, calls it an _excellent Interlude in
Latine_. About the same time it was exhibited in German at Nuremburgh, by
the celebrated _Hanssach_, the _Shoemaker_.

"But a character in the _Taming of the Shrew_ is borrowed from the
_Trinummus_, and no translation of _that_ was extant."

Mr. Colman indeed hath been better employ'd: but if he had met with an old
Comedy, called _Supposes_, translated from Ariosto by George Gascoigne, he
certainly would not have appealed to Plautus. Thence Shakespeare borrowed
this part of the Plot (as well as some of the phraseology), though
Theobald pronounces it his own invention: there likewise he found the
quaint name of _Petruchio_. My young Master and his Man exchange habits
and characters, and persuade a Scen