The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the fun of reading Shakespeare’s earliest plays

Like Titus Andronicus, this is considered one of Shakespeare’s weakest plays. How bad could it be? Let’s see. 

1/ If I’m not mistaken, The Two Gentlemen of Verona is the only Shakespeare play that has a dog (he must have learnt, from experience, the maxim in show business “Never work with children or animals”). There are some hilarious bits, but I won’t copy them out—see for yourself. 

If you ask about my favourite character(s) in the play, I would say Launce and his dog Crab. 

2/ Shakespeare’s earliest plays (this is one of them) are light, but they’re fun to read because they show that right from the beginning, there was wit, there was humour, there was variety, and there was something interesting about the female characters. 

By the last point, I mean the way Shakespeare depicts Julia liking Proteus but pretending not to care about his letter, or Sylvia playing games and flirting with Valentine. The two sisters Adriana and Luciana in The Comedy of Errors are also interesting. You don’t find such lifelike female characters in Marlowe, for example. 

I particularly like Lucetta, Julia’s waiting woman. 

“JULIA […] My penance is to call Lucetta back 

And ask remission for my folly past. 

What, ho! Lucetta! 

[Enter Lucetta]

LUCETTA What would your ladyship? 

JULIA Is’t near dinnertime?

LUCETTA I would it were; 

That you might kill your stomach on your meat, 

And not upon your maid.” 

(Act 1 scene 2) 

Later, when Julia intends to dress up as a man (there’s disguise again) and travel to see her love Proteus: 

“JULIA […] But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me 

For undertaking so unstaid a journey? 

I fear me, it will make me scandalized. 

LUCETTA If you think so, then stay at home, and go not. 

JULIA Nay, that I will not. 

LUCETTA Then never dream on infamy, but go…” 

(Act 2 scene 7) 

I like that exchange. When Lucetta expresses doubt about Proteus being pleased to see Julia, Julia mentions his “A thousand oaths, an ocean of his tears” and gets this response: 

“LUCETTA All these are servants to deceitful men.” 

(ibid.) 

She’s right. 

Another fun thing about reading the early plays is seeing parallels to later plays. For example: 

“VALENTINE […] My foolish rival, that her father likes

Only for his possessions are so huge, 

Is gone with her along: and I must after, 

For love, thou know’st, is full of jealousy. 

PROTEUS But she loves you? 

VALENTINE Ay, and we are betrothed; nay, more, our marriage hour 

With all the cunning manner of our flight, 

Determined of: how I must climb her window, 

The ladder made of cords, and all the means 

Plotted and ’greed on for my happiness…” 

(Act 2 scene 4) 

Doesn’t that make you think of Romeo and Juliet? 

Valentine is talking about Silvia. Now look at his best friend Proteus: 

“PROTEUS […] Even as one heat another heat expels, 

Or as one nail by strength drives out another, 

So the remembrance of my former love

Is by a newer object quite forgotten. 

Is it mine eye, or Valentine’s praise, 

Her true perfection, or my false transgression, 

That makes me reasonless to reason thus? 

She is fair; and so is Julia, that I love—

That I did love, for now my love is thawed,

Which, like a waxen image ’gainst a fire, 

Bears no impression of the thing it was…” 

(ibid.) 

Doesn’t that sound like Romeo falling in love with Juliet and forgetting Rosaline? As Friar Laurence says to Romeo, “Young men’s love then lies/ Not truly in their hearts, but in their eyes.”

There’s even a Friar Laurence in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I’m not kidding. 

The poetry here doesn’t have the exuberance of Romeo and Juliet, but that’s to be expected. 

3/ Valentine plans to elope with Silvia, but Proteus betrays them to Silvia’s father, the Duke. The Duke then plots to expose Valentine by pretending to be attracted to some woman in Verona and asking for his advice. 

“VALENTINE Win her with gifts, if she respect not words. 

Dumb jewels often in their silent kind

More than quick words do move a woman’s mind.” 

(Act 3 scene 1) 

People don’t seem to have changed much. 

“VALENTINE A woman sometimes scorns what best contents her. 

Send her another; never give her o’er; 

For scorn at first makes after-love the more. 

If she do frown, ’tis not in hate of you, 

But rather to beget more love in you. 

If she do chide, ’tis not to have you gone; 

For why, the fools are mad, if left alone. 

Take no repulse, whatever she doth say; 

For “get you gone”, she doth not mean “away!”…” 

(ibid.) 

Doesn’t Valentine sound like one of those “nice guys” one finds all over the internet, who can’t take no for an answer? 

The villain of the play, however, is Proteus. Having got his rival banished, Proteus is asked by the Duke what they should do about Silvia. 

“PROTEUS The best way is to slander Valentine

With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent, 

Three things that women highly hold in hate. 

DUKE Ay, but she’ll think that it is spoke in hate. 

PROTEUS Ay, if his enemy deliver it; 

Therefore it must with circumstance be spoken 

By one whom she esteemeth as his friend.” 

(Act 3 scene 2) 

This shows that right from the beginning, Shakespeare was interested in the dangerous power of words, even if he didn’t directly depict in this play. He’s preoccupied with the same themes throughout his career and this is one of them—the peak, as everyone knows, is Othello. 

Proteus seems to be a mix of Iachimo from Cymbeline and Bertram from All’s Well That Ends Well. Julia dresses up as a man and comes to work for Proteus as a page, and he tells her to court Silvia for him, which anticipates Viola, Orsino, and Olivia in Twelfth Night. There is also a ring in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, as in All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, and Cymbeline. There are lots of parallels to later plays.  

I’m going to get back to Proteus later. 

4/ Silvia knows that Proteus is committed to a woman named Julia, so when Julia, dressing as a page and calling herself Sebastian, courts her on behalf of Proteus and claims to know Julia, Silvia asks for details about her.  

“JULIA About my stature; for, at Pentecost, 

When all our pageants of delight were played, 

Our youth got me to play the woman’s part, 

And I was trimmed in Madame Julia’s gown, 

Which servèd me as fit, by all men’s judgements, 

As if the garment had been made for me. 

Therefore I know she is about my height. 

And that time I made her weep agood, 

For I did play a lamentable part. 

Madam, ’twas Ariadne passioning 

For Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight, 

Which I so lively acted with my tears 

That my poor mistress, movèd therewithal, 

Wept bitterly, and would I might be dead 

If I in thought felt not her very sorrow!”

(Act 4 scene 4) 

Tony Tanner says: 

“This is sending all kinds of signals, not so much to Silvia who of course cannot pick them up, but to the audience, and to herself. And think about it. A boy actor is playing a woman (Julia), who is playing a boy (Sebastian), who describes being dressed up as a woman who is in fact herself, who then plays the part of the mythical female, Ariadne. Curiously enough, it is at this moment of five-levelled artifice, that she comes across to us most convincingly as ‘real’, the most substantial of shadows—a grieving, abandoned woman who has lost her love.” (Introduction) 

That’s even more complicated than in As You Like It: a boy actor is playing a woman (Rosalind), who is playing a guy (Ganymede), who plays a woman in the “courtship practice” with Orlando. 

The entire essay by Tony Tanner should be read—it could be found in his Prefaces to Shakespeare, or the Everyman edition of Shakespeare’s plays (in 7 volumes). He analyses the play, explains the classical allusions, and deepens our understanding.

5/ If you think about it, Proteus is worse than all the similar characters I have mentioned earlier: compared to Orsino, he’s worse because Julia has some claim on him and he’s a cheat; compared to Bertram, he’s worse because Bertram is forced to marry Helena and has never loved her nor made oaths to her; and Proteus is also worse than Iachimo because Iachimo and Posthumus aren’t friends, whereas Proteus and Valentine have been close friends since childhood. Valentine talks about not taking no for an answer, but Proteus is the one who enacts it, and even attempts to rape Silvia. 

In light of all that, the ending is deeply unsatisfying—unless it’s intentional—is it? What should we think about Valentine suddenly offering Silvia to Proteus as a token of friendship? How should we view the resolution at the end of the play? 

Tony Tanner argues: 

“I think this is part of Shakespeare’s discovering of instabilities, absurdities, unrealities in the conventions he was experimenting with. I should, perhaps, make my general position clear. I hold it as axiomatic that, if we find something (or someone) cruel, unconscionable, intolerable (not to mention admirable, lovable, or laughable), in Shakespeare’s plays, then so did Shakespeare. I think the same goes for anything which we find implausible or unacceptable. I have little time for the line that begins—you have to bear in mind that, back then, they felt differently about… I have no wish to sound like Jan Kott in Shakespeare Our Contemporary (though I am not out of sympathy with the implications of the title). I believe we should do all we can to discover the beliefs, values, expectations and so on, of the age of Shakespeare lived in. Historicism, old and new, is to be, selectively, welcomed. But if Shakespeare does not appeal to universal feelings, then nothing does. The idea of ‘making allowances’ for Shakespeare, seems to me some kind of ultimate in benighted presumptuousness. I assume that if we feel something, he felt it too. Shakespeare was certainly learning as he went along, and learning very quickly. But I believe, and thus assume, that he always knew what he was doing. Even if he did not realize quite how extraordinary it all was.” (ibid.)  

This perhaps sounds like Bardolatry, but I agree. For the entire play, Shakespeare depicts Proteus as treacherous—to his childhood friend, to his beloved, to the Duke, to Thurio. Even Proteus’s own servant, Launce, thinks he’s a knave. I don’t think that Shakespeare thinks in the last moment, Proteus would change and return to Julia and have a happy ending. I also refuse to believe that Shakespeare writes Valentine offering Silvia to Proteus merely to contrast Valentine as a true friend to the false friend Proteus. This is similar to the way some people today think Shakespeare was a man of his time and couldn’t have understood the concept of consent, but he did—he kept writing about forced marriages in different plays and was in favour of marrying for love.

When I object to Valentine’s speech “Take no repulse, whatever she doth say” (from earlier), I don’t think that I’m just looking at it with modern eyes and imposing today’s values on the play. Shakespeare knows it’s wrong for a man to impose himself on a woman and not take no for an answer, for he depicts it in Thurio and in Proteus. It’s no wonder that such a man as Valentine would offer Silvia to his friend, as though she’s some sort of property. That moment casts doubt on the marriage between him and Silvia, the same way we have doubt about the happy ending of Proteus and Julia. 

It's interesting to note the character of Eglamore, whom Silvia asks to accompany her when she runs away from court and looks for Valentine. Strictly speaking, Shakespeare doesn’t really need him—Silvia could disguise herself, as Julia does. But Eglamore, whose sole purpose is to protect Silvia, runs away the moment the outlaws appear in the woods, and leaves her to potential rape and death. Chivalry’s dead. Clearly, Shakespeare is saying something about the values of the men in the play.  

There is of course another reading of the scene. 

“VALENTINE […] But that my love may appear plain and free, 

All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.” 

(Act 5 scene 4) 

Most critics interpret the last line as Valentine offering Silvia to Proteus because that happens in the story of Titus and Gisippus, one of the sources for The Two Gentlemen of Verona. However, some other critics read the ambiguous line as Valentine saying that he would love Proteus as much as he loves Silvia. If that’s the case, that does change the ending, but there are two things that must be noted. First of all, after those lines and for the rest of the play, Silvia doesn’t speak a single word, not even when her father allows them to get married. 

Secondly, look at the final lines in the play: 

“VALENTINE Please you, I’ll tell you as we pass along,

That you will wonder what hath fortunèd. 

Come, Proteus; ’tis your penance but to hear 

The story of your loves discoverèd. 

That done, our day of marriage shall be yours; 

One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.” 

(ibid.) 

Valentine addresses “one mutual happiness” to Proteus, not Silvia—Proteus, who not long ago was courting Silvia and attempting to rape her. In fact, in the final scene, Valentine doesn’t address her once, when they haven’t seen each other for some time. In Shakespeare’s plays, people who reunite after separation always say something to each other, as we see in The Comedy of Errors, Twelfth Night, Much Ado About Nothing, King Lear, Cymbeline…; the only exceptions are when they cannot reconcile with each other, like Isabella and her brother Claudio in Measure for Measure, Hermione and Leontes in The Winter’s Tale, and Prospero and his treacherous brother Antonio in The Tempest. In those plays, the silence speaks volumes. 

Perhaps it’s the same in this case?