scenes would be due to such force of expression and by-play as could be thrown into them by clever actors; they are very bald indeed in the reading. The claim which the speaker of the brief epilogue makes for the play, that its morality is of the purest and simplest, is well deserved. It contains, strange to say, no female character whatever. For these and other reasons 'The Captives,' in spite of the lack of comic element, used to be a very favourite selection with English schoolmasters, in the days when the performance of a Latin comedy by the elder scholars seems to have formed part of the annual routine in most of our large schools. Yet, strange to say, there is no record of it having ever been performed at Westminster. Perhaps the absence of those distinctly comic characters and situations which are made so telling in the annual performance by the Queen's Scholars has been the reason of its neglect.
VI.—THE TWO MENÆCHMI.
This comedy deserves notice not so much for its own merits—for whatever they might have appeared to a Roman audience, they are not highly appreciable by our taste—but because upon it Shakspeare founded his 'Comedy of Errors.' It appears to have been the only work of Plautus which had at that time been translated into English, which may account for its being the only one from which Shakspeare seems to have borrowed. The plot is improbable in the highest degree, though admitting some farcical situations. It all turns upon the supposed resemblance between two twin-brothers—so strong as to deceive their
