The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1589 and 1593. It is considered by some to be Shakespeare's first play, and is often seen as showing his first tentative steps in laying out some of the themes and motifs with which he would later deal in more detail; for example, it is the first of his plays in which a heroine dresses as a boy. The play deals with the themes of friendship and infidelity, the conflict between friendship and love, and the foolish behaviour of people in love. The highlight of the play is considered by some to be Launce, the clownish servant of Proteus, and his dog Crab, to whom "the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon" has been attributed.
Two Gentlemen is often regarded as one of Shakespeare's weakest plays. It has the smallest named cast of any play by Shakespeare.
Characters Verona:
Valentine – a gentleman Proteus – Valentine's best friend Julia – Proteus' betrothed Launce – Proteus' servant Speed – Valentine's servant Antonio – Proteus' father Panthino – Antonio's servant Lucetta – Julia's servant Crab – Launce's dog
Milan:
The Duke – Silvia's father Silvia – Valentine's beloved Thurio – a foolish suitor to Silvia Sir Eglamour – a knight who aids Silvia
The Forest:
The Host – an innkeeper who helps Julia The Outlaws – banished men originally from Milan
Summary
Valentine, a gentleman of Verona, is preparing to leave for Milan, accompanied by his servant, Speed, in order to expand his horizons at the Duke of Milan's court. He hopes that his best friend, Proteus, will come, but Proteus is unwilling to leave his love, Julia. Disappointed, Valentine departs alone.
Proteus's father, however, has been persuaded that Proteus too needs to further his gentlemanly education, and he orders his son to leave for Milan the very next day, prompting a tearful farewell with Julia, to whom Proteus swears eternal love. The couple exchange rings and vows. Proteus sets off accompanied by his own servant, Launce, and Launce's dog, Crab.
In Milan, Valentine has fallen in love with the Duke's daughter, Silvia, who clearly prefers this suitor to the wealthy but foppish Thurio whom her father wants her to marry. As soon as Proteus arrives, he too falls in love with Silvia. Determined to win her, and agonising only briefly about betraying both his friend and his lover, Proteus slyly tells the Duke that Valentine plans to elope with Silvia, using a corded ladder to rescue her from the tower room in which she is imprisoned each night. The Duke banishes Valentine. Wandering in the forest, Valentine runs into a band of outlaws. When Valentine claims he was exiled for killing a man in a duel, the outlaws believe him and elect him their leader.
Back in Verona, Julia decides to join her lover in Milan and convinces her maid Lucetta to dress her in boy's clothes. On arrival in Milan, Julia discovers Proteus's love for Silvia and watches him serenade her. To learn more, she contrives to become his page boy, calling herself Sebastian. Proteus sends Julia/Sebastian to Silvia with a gift of a ring that Julia had given him before he left Verona. Silvia scorns Proteus's affections, repelled by his inconstancy to the lover he has left behind.
In despair, Silvia flees into the forest, where she is quickly taken prisoner by the outlaws. They head to their new leader, Valentine, on the way encountering Proteus and Julia/Sebastian. Proteus rescues Silvia but, secretly observed by Valentine, continues to press his unwanted suit. When Proteus tells Silvia that he intends to force himself on her, Valentine intervenes.
Proteus professes to be horrified by his own behaviour. Convinced that Proteus's repentance is genuine, Valentine forgives him and says "All that was mine in Silvia I give thee". At this point, overwhelmed, Julia swoons, revealing her true identity. Proteus suddenly recalls his love for her and vows fidelity once again.
The Duke and Thurio are brought in by the outlaws. Thurio claims Silvia as his, but Valentine warns that if he makes a move toward her, he will kill him. Terrified, Thurio renounces his claim. The Duke, disgusted by Thurio's cowardice and impressed by Valentine's actions, approves Valentine's and Silvia's love and consents to their marriage. The two couples, Valentine and Silvia, and Proteus and Julia, are happily united. The Duke pardons the outlaws and permits their return to Milan.
Sources
In writing The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare drew on the Spanish prose romance Los Siete Libros de la Diana (The Seven Books of the Diana) by the Portuguese writer Jorge de Montemayor. In the second book of Diana, Don Felix, who is in love with Felismena, sends her a letter explaining his feelings. Like Julia, Felismena pretends to reject the letter and be annoyed with her maid for delivering it. Like Proteus, Felix is sent away by his father, and is followed by Felismena, who, disguised as a boy, becomes his page, only to subsequently learn that Felix has fallen in love with Celia. Felismena is then employed by Felix to act as his messenger in all communications with Celia, who scorns his love. Instead, Celia falls in love with the page (i.e. Felismena in disguise). Eventually, after a combat in a wood, Felix and Felismena are reunited. Upon Felismena revealing herself, however, Celia, having no counterpart to Valentine, dies of grief.
Diana was published in Spanish in 1559 and translated into French by Nicholas Collin in 1578. An English translation was made by Bartholomew Young and published in 1598, though Young claims in his preface to have finished the translation sixteen years earlier (c. 1582). Shakespeare could have read a manuscript of Young's English translation, or encountered the story in French, or learned of it from an anonymous English play, The History of Felix and Philomena, which may have been based on Diana, and which was performed for the court at Greenwich Palace by the Queen's Men on 3 January 1585. The History of Felix and Philiomena is now lost.
Another major influence on Shakespeare was the story of the intimate friendship of Titus and Gisippus as told in Thomas Elyot's The Boke Named the Governour in 1531 (the same story is told in The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, but verbal similarities between The Two Gentlemen and The Governor suggest it was Elyot's work Shakespeare used as his primary source, not Boccaccio's). In this story, Titus and Gisippus are inseparable until Gisippus falls in love with Sophronia. He introduces her to Titus, but Titus is overcome with jealousy and vows to seduce her. Upon hearing of Titus' plan, Gisippus arranges for them to change places on the wedding night, thus placing their friendship above his love.
Also important to Shakespeare in the composition of the play was John Lyly's Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit, published in 1578. Like The Governor, Euphues presents two close friends who are inseparable until a woman comes between them, and, like both The Governor and Two Gentlemen, the story concludes with one friend sacrificing the woman so as to save the friendship. However, as Geoffrey Bullough argues "Shakespeare's debt to Lyly was probably one of technique more than matter." Lyly's Midas may also have influenced the scene where Launce and Speed run through the milkmaid's virtues and defects, as it contains a very similar scene between Lucio and Petulus.
Other minor sources include Arthur Brooke's narrative poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, Shakespeare's source for Romeo and Juliet. It features a character called Friar Laurence, as does Two Gentlemen, and a scene where a young man attempts to outwit his lover's father by means of a corded ladder (as Valentine does in Two Gentlemen). Philip Sidney's The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia may also have influenced Shakespeare insofar as it contains a character who follows her betrothed, dressed as his page, and later on, one of the main characters becomes captain of a group of Helots.
Date and text
Date
The exact date of composition of The Two Gentlemen of Verona is unknown, but it is generally believed to have been one of Shakespeare's earliest works.See , , and The first evidence of its existence is in a list of Shakespeare's plays in Francis Meres's Palladis Tamia, published in 1598, but it is thought to have been written in the early 1590s. Clifford Leech, for example, argues for 1592/1593; G. Blakemore Evans places the date at 1590–1593; Gary Taylor suggests 1590–1591; Kurt Schlueter posits the late 1580s; William C. Carroll suggests 1590–1592; Roger Warren tentatively suggests 1587, but acknowledges 1590/1591 as more likely.
It has been argued that Two Gentlemen may have been Shakespeare's first work for the stage. This theory was first suggested by Edmond Malone in 1821, in the Third Variorum edition of Shakespeare's plays, edited by James Boswell based on Malone's notes. Malone dated the play 1591, a modification of his earlier 1595 date from the third edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare. At this time, the dominant theory was that the Henry VI trilogy had been Shakespeare's first work. More recently, the play was placed first in The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works of 1986, again in the 2nd edition of 2005, and again in the New Oxford Shakespeare edition of 2016, in The Norton Shakespeare of 1997, and again in the 2nd edition of 2008, and in The Complete Pelican Shakespeare of 2002.
A large part of the theory that this may be Shakespeare's first play is the quality of the work itself. Writing in 1968, Norman Sanders argued "all are agreed on the play's immaturity." The argument is that the play betrays a lack of practical theatrical experience on Shakespeare's part, and as such, it must have come extremely early in his career. Stanley Wells, for example, has written the "dramatic structure is comparatively unambitious, and while some of its scenes are expertly constructed, those involving more than, at the most, four characters betray an uncertainty of technique suggestive of inexperience." This uncertainty can be seen in how Shakespeare handles the distribution of dialogue in such scenes. Whenever there are more than three characters on stage, at least one of those characters tends to fall silent. For example, Speed is silent for almost all of 2.4, as are Thurio, Silvia and Julia for most of the last half of the final scene. It has also been suggested that the handling of the final scene in general, in which the faithful lover seemingly offers his beloved as a token of his forgiveness to the man who has just attempted to rape her, is a sign of Shakespeare's lack of maturity as a dramatist.
In his 2008 edition of the play for the Oxford Shakespeare, Roger Warren argues that the play is the oldest surviving piece of Shakespearean literature, suggesting a date of composition as somewhere between 1587 and 1591. He hypothesizes that the play was perhaps written before Shakespeare came to London, with an idea towards using the famous comic actor Richard Tarlton in the role of Launce (this theory stems from the fact that Tarlton had performed several extremely popular and well-known scenes with dogs). However, Tarlton died in September 1588, and Warren notes several passages in Two Gentlemen which seem to borrow from John Lyly's Midas, which wasn't written until at least late 1589. As such, Warren acknowledges that 1590/1591 is most likely the correct date of composition.
Text The play was not printed until 1623, when it appeared in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays.
Criticism and analysis
Critical history