[NOTES.]
[ Note I.]
In the spelling of the name of ‘Solinus’ we have followed the first Folio. In the subsequent Folios it was altered, most probably by an accident in F2 to ‘Salinus.’ The name occurs only once in the copies, and that in the first line of the text. The name which we have given as ‘Antipholus’ is spelt indifferently thus, and ‘Antipholis’ in the Folios. It will hardly be doubted that the lines in the rhyming passage, [III. 2. 2, 4], where the Folios read ‘Antipholus,’ are correctly amended by Capell, and prove that ‘Antipholus’ is the spelling of Shakespeare. Either word is evidently corrupted from ‘Antiphilus.’ These names are merely arbitrary, but the surnames, ‘Erotes’ and ‘Sereptus,’ are most probably errors for ‘Errans,’ or ‘Erraticus’ and ‘Surreptus,’ of which the latter is plainly derived from Plautus’ Menæchmus Surreptus, a well-known character in Shakespeare’s day: see Brian Melbancke’s Philotimus (1582), p. 160: ‘Thou art like Menechmus Subreptus his wife ... whose “husband shall not neede to be justice of peace” for she “will have a charter to make her justice of coram.”’ See [Merry Wives, I. 1. 4, 5]. In spelling ‘Syracusian’ instead of ‘Syracusan’ we follow the practice of the Folios in an indifferent matter. ‘Epidamnum’ not ‘Epidamium’ is found in the English translation of the Menæchmi, 1595, so the latter form in F1 is probably a printer’s error.
[ Note II.]
[I. 2. 1]. That this scene is laid at the Mart appears from Antipholus’s allusion to this place in [II. 2. 5, 6]:
‘I could not speak with Dromio since at first
I sent him from the mart.’
As this play is derived from a classical prototype, Capell has supposed no change of scene, but lays the whole action in ‘a Publick Place;’ evidently with much inconvenience to the Persons.