Each one demand, and answer to his part
Perform'd in this wide gap of time, since first
We were dissever'd: Hastily lead away.

[Exeunt.

This play, as Dr. Warburton justly observes, is, with all its absurdities, very entertaining. The character of Autolycus is naturally conceived, and strongly represented.

JOHNSON.

H

COMEDY OF ERRORS.

A merchant, friend to Antipholus of Syracuse. Finch, a schoolmaster, and a conjuror.

Emilia, wife to Egeon, an abbess at Ephesus.

Adriana, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus.

Luciana, her sister.

Luce, her servant.

A courtezan.

Gaoler, officers, and other attendants.
Scene, Ephesus.

COMEDY OF ERRORS.

ACT I.

SCENE I.-A hall in the Duke's palace.

Enter Duke, Egeon, Gaoler, officer, and other attendants.

Egcon.

PROCEED, Solinus, to procure my fall,
And, by the doom of death, end woes and all.
Duke. Merchant of Syracusa, plead no more;
I am not partial, to infringe our laws :
The enmity and discord, which of late

Sprung from the rancorous outrage of your duke
To merchants, our well-dealing countrymen,—
Who, wanting gilders* to redeem their lives,
Have sealed his rigorous statutes with their bloods,-
Excludes all pity from our threat'ning looks.
For, since the mortal and intestine jars
'Twixt thy seditious countrymen and us,
It hath in solemn synods been decreed,
Both by the Syracusans and ourselves,

Name of a coin.