Para1This is the only play in the Douai manuscript with a distinctive title, one that shows marks of appreciation. The play covers three full quires and one gathering of three half-sheets. The text is almost entirely verbatim from F2, with almost no cuts (perhaps because it is a very short play), which constitutes a very different case from those of plays like Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It, both heavily abridged, but aligns Comedy of Errors with Julius Caesar, also transcribed almost verbatim from F2. Another characteristic it shares with the latter play is the use of Latin forms for Acts 1 to 3 (but in this the scribe or editor follows F2), although not for Acts 4 and 5. There is no division in scenes beyond the indication of the first scene of Act I; this shows a departure from F2, which includes a reference to the first scene of each act. The text of the Douai MS for this play is quite clean on the whole. There are fewer added stage directions than in the other plays. As with the other plays, the lexis and syntax tend to be modernized, and the punctuation is very light (and often erratic). Most of the changes made to the text of F2 concern word substitutions or word order, but the scribe or editor has made fewer changes to F2’s text than in other plays. The F2 text has occasionally been edited by the Douai scribe-cum-editor who corrects a few mistakes, but there are a number of small changes that introduce new errors, like changes in pronouns, small words accidentally omitted, often necessitating insertions above the line, or words redoubled. The editor’s major area of intervention concerns the addition of the revised title and a list of characters, which is the first ever for this play. A few substantial variants and emendations which often predate Rowe, Theobald, Pope, or Malone are recorded in the collation and annotation lists. There are two manuscript interventions by a later hand, marked as Hand 2 (as in the other plays) in this edition, which are two stage directions added in the margin. They are highlighted in red in the enhanced reading mode of our edition.

Para2Only the major departures from F2 have been indicated in the collation, however, and the salient points of the transcription-cum-edition have been flagged in the annotations. Variants in punctuation and lineation are not recorded. Note that the Douai manuscript modernizes the lexis, by consistently substituting yes for the archaic Ay or I, or my for mine, if for and, and of which for whereof. Some substitutions of a plural form for a singular, or vice versa, have not been marked, unless they were considered significant emendations.

Para3The author of the Douai MS uses some abbreviations in this play, especially Latin ones like ꝑ (minuscule cut p for per, pre or par) and occasionally ꝰ for final ending -us, which seem to reflect professional scribal habits. These abbreviations are only used more freely in Julius Caesar.