The Comedy of Errors - Date & Text

Date & Text

The play contains a topical reference to the wars of succession in France which would fit any date from 1589 to 1595. William Warner's translation of the Menaechmi was entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 10 June 1594, and published in 1595. Warner's translation was dedicated to Lord Hunsdon, the patron of the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It has been supposed that Shakespeare might have seen the translation in manuscript before it was printed – though it is also true that Plautus was part of the curriculum of grammar school students. Charles Whitworth, in his edition of the play, argues that The Comedy of Errors was written "in the latter part of 1594." The play was not published until it appeared in the First Folio in 1623.

Read more about this topic:  The Comedy Of Errors

Famous quotes containing the words date and/or text:

    In the South, the war is what A.D. is elsewhere: they date from it.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)

    The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out.... Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.
    Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)