turally enough. There is little character-drawing in the play.
Any two pairs of twins, in the same predicament, would be equally droll.
The fun lies in the situation. This was a comedy of the Latin school,
and resembled the _Mennaechmi_ of Plautus. Shakspere never returned to
this type of play, though there is an element of "errors" in _Midsummer
Night's Dream_. In the _Two Gentlemen of Verona_ he finally hit upon
that species of romantic comedy which he may be said to have invented or
created out of the scattered materials at hand in the works of his
predecessors. In this play, as in the _Merchant of Venice, Midsummer
Night's Dream, Much Ado about Nothing, As You Like It, Twelfth Night,
Winter's Tale, All's Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure_, and the
_Tempest_, the plan of construction is as follows. There is one main
intrigue carried out by the high comedy characters, and a secondary
intrigue, or underplot, by the low comedy characters. The former is by
no means purely comic, but admits the presentation of the noblest
motives, the strongest passions, and the most delicate graces of
romantic poetry. In some of the plays it has a prevailing lightness and
gayety, as in _As You Like It_ and _Twelfth Night_. In others, like
_Measure for Measure_, it is barely saved from becoming tragedy by the
happy close. Shylock certainly remains a tragic figure, even to the end,
and a play like _Winter's Tale_, in which the painful situation is
prolonged for years, is only technically a comedy. Such dramas, indeed,
were called, on many of the title-pages of the time, "tragi-comedies."
The low comedy interlude, on the other hand, was broadly comic. It was
cunningly interwoven with the texture of the play, sometimes loosely,
and by way of variety or relief, as in the episode of Touchstone and
Audrey, in _As You Like It_; sometimes closely, as in the case of
Dogberry and Verges, in _Much Ado about Nothing_, where the blundering
of the watch is made to bring about the denouement of the main action.
The _Merry Wives of Windsor_ is an exception to this plan of
construction. It is Shakspere's only play of contemporary, middle-class
English life, and, is written almost throughout in prose. It is his only
pure comedy, except the _Taming of the Shrew_.

Shakspere did not abandon comedy when writing tragedy, though he turned
it to a new account. The two species graded into one another. Thus
_Cymbeline_ is, in its fortunate ending, really as