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"The Comedy of Errors" is borrowed from Plautus; and then came "Romeo and Juliet," founded upon a novellino by Masuccio, who had taken the story from the Greek. It has served for many countries, but nowhere has the plot found such a magical handling as Shakespeare gave it.
In the Novellino of Masuccio, which was first printed in 1476, there is a passage in the tenth novel of the first part, in which a rogue passes as "grandissimo cognoscitore" of gems because he had spent much time in Scotland. De Varietate, p. 636. De Varietate, p. 637. Ibid., p. 637. Ibid., p. 565. "Peracto L anno quod stipendium non remuneraretur mansi Mediolani." De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. 15.
The play can be traced to its source, whether that source be a novellino of Masuccio, or Holinshed's "Chronicles," or Plutarch's Lives in North's translation, from which some passages are copied in extenso. The poet himself would seem to have had but little consciousness of the worth of his own work. In his time plays were not published.
The substance of the Gesta Romanorum and the style of the Novellino appear so, considered in relation to the Decameron; the mystery plays are an obvious instance, not to be explained by any general immaturity of medieval ideas.
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