entle boy Arthur learns from Hubert that the king
has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as affecting as any passage in
tragic literature.

'Comedy of Errors' in Gray's Inn Hall.

At the close of 1594 a performance of Shakespeare's early farce, 'The
Comedy of Errors,' gave him a passing notoriety that he could well have
spared. The piece was played on the evening of Innocents' Day (December
28), 1594, in the hall of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience of
benchers, students, and their friends. There was some disturbance during
the evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, who,
dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded them, retired in dudgeon.
'So that night,' the contemporary chronicler states, 'was begun and
continued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, whereupon it
was ever afterwards called the "Night of Errors."' {70} Shakespeare was
acting on the same day before the Queen at Greenwich, and it is doubtful
if he were present. On the morrow a commission of oyer and terminer
inquired into the causes of the tumult, which was attributed to a
sorcerer having 'foisted a company of base and common fellows to make up
our disorders with a play of errors and confusions.'

Early plays doubtfully assigned to Shakespeare.

Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public attention during the
period under review (1591-4)--'Arden of Feversham' (licensed for
publication April 3, 1592, and published in 1592) and 'Edward III'
(licensed for publication December 1, 1595, and published in 1596).
Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, mainly on the ground that
their dramatic energy is of a quality not to be discerned in the work of
any contemporary whose writings are extant. There is no external
evidence in favour of Shakespeare's authorship in either case. 'Arden of
Feversham' dramatises with intensity and insight a sordid murder of a
husband by a wife which took place at Faversham in 1551, and was fully
reported by Holinshed. The subject is of a different type from any which
Shakespeare is known to have treated, and although the play may be, as
Mr. Swinburne insists, 'a young man's work,' it bears no relation either
in topic or style to the work on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a
period so early as 1591 or 1592. 'Edward III' is a play in Marlowe's
vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare on even more shadowy grounds.
Capell reprinted it in his 'Prolusions' in 1760, and