Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Comedies
Shakespeare, William. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. (The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 148-96.)
Of Interest: RSC Resources | ISE Resources | S-O Sources | 1623 Folio 40-58 (Folger) | Thomas Elyot’s 1531 The Governour, Bk II Ch XII | Analog: John Lyly’s 1579 Euphues, The Anatomy of Wit (Story of Euphues, Lucilla, and Philautus) | Jorge de Montemayor’s 1598 Diana Enamorada (Rennert transl.) | Montemayor’s Diana (Bartholomew Yong transl.) |
ACT 1
Synopsis of Act 1: Two young friends raised in Verona, Valentine and Proteus, are sent to the Duke’s court in Milan by their fathers to gain some experience of the wider world. Valentine is eager to go, but Proteus is conflicted—he is in love with Julia, who seems fond of him as well. In this first act, then, two plot elements are established by the father-induced “destabilizing event” of a journey beyond Verona: a concentration on both male friendship and heterosexual love.
Act 1, Scene 1 (148-51, Valentine, about to depart for Milan, says goodbye to his dear friend Proteus, whose love for Julia keeps him in Verona; alone, Proteus declares his ideal of love; Valentine’s servant, Speed, tells Proteus that he has delivered his letter to Julia, then hurries off to catch up with Valentine.)
It’s been said that this early play is a mix (sometimes awkward) of plot elements and basic themes, and it’s easy to see the correctness of that view from the outset. The Veronese youth Valentine, who has been encouraged by his father to travel and learn what he can about the wider world—or at least Milan, to be more precise—is ready to begin his travels and see the wider world. [1] Valentine’s male friend Proteus, however, professes to be too much in love with a certain Julia to travel, so he means to let the world wait.
These two young fellows Valentine and Proteus illustrate the typical classical ideal of male friendship, which the ancient Romans referred to as amicitia perfecta. [2] The play’s first line has Valentine addressing his friend as “my loving Proteus,” and the advice he offers Proteus is redolent of the Aristotelian sentiment that “a friend is another self.” [3] So we have two areas of interest, two themes: the value of classical male friendship, and the power of male-female love.
That Valentine doesn’t know his friend very well is telegraphed by his earnest advice, “But since thou lov’st, love still, and thrive therein, / Even as I would when I to love begin” (148, 1.1.9-10). The very name Proteus, we easily recognize, portends anything but the constancy that Valentine’s word “still” implies. [4] Well, true to his shape at the moment, Proteus says touchingly to his friend, “If ever danger do environ thee, / Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers; / For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine” (148, 1.1.16-18).
A little bantering follows about the quality of the classical tragical tale “Hero and Leander,” [5] and Valentine, unable to convince Proteus to set out with him for Milan, takes his leave. The two youths have promised to keep up with each other by letter.
Left alone, Proteus gives us his ideal of love by way of distinguishing himself from Valentine: “He leaves his friends to dignify them more; / I leave myself, my friends, and all, for love” (150, 64-65). How true that will turn out to be, though in a way that shows how unhelpful and ultimately unattractive such impossible ideals can be. We know to beware of people who say things like, “All’s fair in love and war.”
What more Proteus has to say convinces us that he considers himself a downright lover, one who could benefit from reading Robert Burton’s 1621 classic The Anatomy of Melancholy, which deals in part with the causes of love melancholy. [6] His beloved Julia, he insists, has transformed him, “metamorphosed” him (150, 1.1.66). She has, he says, “Made me neglect my studies, lose my time, / War with good counsel, set the world at naught; / Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought” (150, 1.1.67-69).
Just as Proteus finishes this typical blame game, Valentine’s page, Speed, shows up. Speed is kin to many an ancient Roman comedy’s witty and wily servant, with a master substantially dependent upon his efforts. Leaving the usual sexually suggestive repartee aside, we learn that Speed has delivered a letter from Proteus to Julia, and that he, Speed, couldn’t tell whether she liked the letter or not. Proteus is disappointed to hear this, and determines to find “some better messenger” (151, 1.1.141) to convey his thoughts. [7] Speed doesn’t hear this—true to his name, he has already rushed off to catch up with Valentine.
Act 1, Scene 2 (151-55, Julia is handed Proteus’s letter by her waiting-woman, Lucetta, and pretends to scorn it as too bold; however, after tearing it to pieces, she puts part of it back together and interprets it in her own way.)
Julia banters with her waiting woman, Lucetta, about who is the best of her suitors. What about Sir Eglamour, or Mercatio, or Proteus? asks Julia. Lucetta prefers Proteus before the others. Why does she think him best? Says she, “I have no other but a woman’s reason: / I think him so because I think him so” (152, 1.1-23.24). There is no need to enumerate the fellow’s qualities. As the French thought runs, “The heart has reasons that reason doesn’t understand.” [8]
In the stichomythic or one-liner exchange that follows, we are treated to a clash of opposing opinions. When Julia says of Proteus and people in general, “They do not love that do not show their love,” Lucetta counters with “Oh, they love least that let men know their love” (152, 1.2.31-32).
As it turns out, Speed had delivered his letter not directly to Julia, but instead to Lucetta, who now gives it to her mistress. Julia at first scorns to read the letter, but then decides that she wants to read it after all. Lucetta returns, and picks up the letter, which she had either deliberately or accidentally dropped. The two get into a bit of a music-term-laden scuffle over who should read the letter’s contents. At last, Julia takes hold of the letter and tears it to pieces.
All the same, Julia picks up the pieces of the letter, reproaching herself as she does so. It seems that she never completely restores the letter, but instead makes her own interpretation of the pieces that she manages to string together. The argument made is no doubt typical of its kind, so perhaps a few ideas, in few words, will serve for the whole.
Act 1, Scene 3 (155-57, While Proteus is poring over Julia’s return letter, he meets his father, Antonio, and pretends that the letter is from Valentine; Antonio tells Proteus that he must join Valentine in Milan, and the youth’s reaction shows that he is of two minds: either way, he will end up missing someone he loves.)
Antonio asks his servant Pantino what he was talking about with his (Antonio’s) brother a while ago, and Pantino tells him frankly that the brother can’t understand why Antonio hasn’t yet sent Proteus off to gain some experience beyond his comfortable native city, Verona. Antonio agrees with this sentiment, saying of Proteus, “he cannot be a perfect man, / Not being tried and tutored in the world” (155, 1.3.20-21). What’s called for is at least a less ambitious version of what would in future be termed the “Gentleman’s Grand Tour.” [9] This is what makes a young man “perfect,” or, as we would say, well-rounded. [10]
Well, in wanders Proteus, carrying the letter that Julia has sent to him, and his father, Antonio, believing the lie his son tells that the letter is from Valentine in Milan, promptly asks him if he would like to join him there. Proteus is trapped, and Antonio won’t hear of any answer but “yes.” He is to leave the next day, and whatever he needs will be sent after him to Milan. [11] This very mild version of the comic senex iratus or “angry old man” has spoken! [12]
Proteus is most dissatisfied at this turn of events, and in his grief, he speaks what are among the few genuinely exquisite lines in this early effort by Shakespeare: “Oh, how this spring of love resembleth / The uncertain glory of an April day, / Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, / And by and by a cloud takes all away!” (157, 1.3.84-87)
As the Norton editor suggests in Note 6 on pg. 157, though, the lines that Proteus speaks to end this third scene indicate a certain division in his thoughts: he both misses Valentine greatly and will greatly miss Julia when he travels to Milan.
ACT 2
Synopsis of Act 2: Proteus is packed off by his father to the court at Milan, where Valentine already is. In Milan, Proteus immediately transfers his desire to Valentine’s love interest, Silvia, and schemes to get his unsuspecting friend banished. Not yet knowing about this double betrayal, Julia plans to set out in the disguise of a male page after Proteus. Proteus’s servant Lance reinforces the significance of loyalty by complaining about his supposedly disloyal dog, Crab, while Valentine’s servant, Speed, keeps us at a comic distance from his master’s naïve love for Silvia. In this act, Valentine and Julia are set up as believers in a romantic ideal that cannot survive the real world intact.
Act 2, Scene 1 (157-60, Valentine listens to his servant Speed’s jests about the transformations love has wrought in his master, and finds out through Speed as well that the letter Silvia made him write to an admirer was actually meant for him.)
Valentine is in love with Silvia in the stylized, abstract way that “first love” so often deals with the beloved almost as an object, and young Speed, his servant, injects some comedic common sense into his running conversation with the master. We could almost believe that Speed has been reading Shakespeare’s most humorous sonnets, some of which send up the Petrarchan tradition of praising and longing for an unattainable, impossibly perfect lover. [13]
Speed’s inventory of the “special marks” that typify a downright lover is excellent. The boy says to Valentine, “you have learned, / like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malcontent; / to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, / like one that had the pestilence …” and so forth (157, 2.1.17-19). These signs of love-affliction, insists Speed, are evident “without” (outside of, 2.1.30) Valentine, whether he sees them as such, or whether he believes that they all come from some romantic place deep within. What Valentine experiences as profound romantic expression, Speed perceives to be easily stylized moves that any foolish lover makes. [14]
What Speed says about Silvia bluntly exposes the supposed “artificiality” of female beauty. Silvia, he quips, is “so painted to make her fair that no man / counts of her beauty” (158, 2.1.53-54). In other words, she uses so much makeup that no one takes serious notice of her appearance. Speed’s comments also speak to the possibility that love often has more to do with projection of qualities into the beloved than with anything actually existing inside them. Silvia, he suggests, is “well favored” (i.e., viewed favorably) only because Valentine’s extravagant obsession with her has “deformed” her from what she really is (158, 2.1.47, 56). [15]
It seems that Silvia asked Valentine “to write some lines / to one she loves,” and he has obliged (158, 2.1.77). As Speed quickly understands from the dialogue between Silvia and Valentine, she has made her suitor write a love note to himself, thus saving herself the effort of writing on her own behalf in response to other letters that Valentine has written to her. If there had been telephones in Shakespeare’s day, we might call this device “phoning it in.” No matter—Valentine doesn’t seem too disappointed at this little trick on Silvia’s part.
Act 2, Scene 2 (160-61, Proteus bids farewell for now to Julia, and, promising to remain hers as ever, he affirms his faith with a “handfasting” or betrothal.)
Proteus’s time to part with Julia has come, and as the Norton editor points out, the two lovers, exchanging rings and a kiss, perform what is essentially a betrothal (160, 2.2.5-7). The idealized nature of Proteus’s affection for Julia is evident in his strong oath: “when that hour o’erslips me in the day / Wherein I sigh not, Julia, for thy sake, / The next ensuing hour some foul mischance / Torment me for my love’s forgetfulness” (160-61, 2.2.9-12).
Act 2, Scene 3 (161-62, Lance, Proteus’s servant, expresses his sadness upon leaving his family behind to travel with his master; he scolds his dog, Crab, for failing to express similar sorrow in sympathy with him, but finally obeys Pantino, who has come calling for him to embark.)
Proteus’s servant Lance comically laments his leave-taking from family and friends to follow Proteus on his voyage to Milan. But the worst of it, says Lance, is that his dog, Crab, has failed to show the degree of sadness that his master considers appropriate. Pantino finally convinces Lance that he really needs to set out now if he means to make the trip in a timely manner, but the scene’s heft lies with the “disagreement” between Lance and the dog he imagines to be unwilling to sympathize with his predicament: “all our house,” says Lance, is weeping, but “yet did not this cruel-hearted cur shed one tear” (161, 2.3.8). [16]
This scene serves as a parody of Proteus and Julia’s sentimental parting. An inexperienced lover such as Proteus believes his love to encompass the universe, or at least everyone around him. Everyone else should be as wrapped up in their emotions as Proteus is. Crab, however, remains indifferent to Lance’s sorrow over the need to leave his loved ones. In this way, “servant scenes” like this one deflate the high-class rhetoric and rituals of courtship, and they also deflate the lovers’ exalted notions and expectations for their love.
Act 2, Scene 4 (162-67, Proteus arrives in Milan and is met by Valentine and Silvia; Valentine asks Silvia to entertain Proteus as her servant, but the latter man confesses to himself that he has fallen in love with Silvia, forgotten Julia, and cooled towards his friend Valentine.)
The Duke of Milan, Silvia’s father, interrupts the bantering of Sir Turio (another of Silvia’s suitors) and Valentine by asking him to tell what he knows of Proteus. Valentine proclaims that no one is closer to him: “I knew him as myself, for from our infancy / We have conversed and spent our hours together” (163, 2.4.58-59). He puffs up his friend’s reputation by saying that the youth has “Made use and fair advantage of his days”—far more so than Valentine himself (163, 2.4.64).
The Duke then reveals that Proteus has arrived in Milan and intends to stay for some time. The Duke sends Proteus to greet Valentine and Silvia, and Valentine innocently requests that Silvia “entertain him / To be my fellow-servant to your ladyship” (164, 2.4.100-01). When Silvia has left, Valentine confesses to his friend that he no longer scorns love, and has in fact become quite the penitent, saying, “For in revenge of my contempt of love, / Love hath chased sleep from my enthrallèd eyes / And made them watchers of my own heart’s sorrow” (165, 2.4.129-31).
Proteus moves to deflate Valentine’s Petrarchan excesses about Silvia, saying, “I will not flatter her” (165, 2.4.143). All the same, a note of competition enters the conversation, with Valentine refusing to give up on the notion that his love, Silvia, is preeminent in all the world, and tosses out a sop to Proteus concerning Julia: “She shall be dignified with this high honor, / to bear my lady’s train …” (165, 2.4.154-55).
Valentine goes on to babble something he really shouldn’t: he informs Proteus of his and Silvia’s plan to elope from Milan since her father prefers the wealthy Turio for her husband. Says Valentine in confidence, “I must climb her window, / The ladder made of cords, and all the means / Plotted and ‘greed on for my happiness” (166, 2.4.177-79).
Proteus agrees to help Valentine in this endeavor, but his thoughts lie elsewhere. Silvia’s image has made him forget all about Julia, he admits to himself, and he further confesses, “Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold, / And that I love him not as I was wont. / Oh but I love his lady too much” (166, 2.4.199-201). His plan? To try to restrain his desire for Silvia, but if he can’t, he says, he will do his level best to “compass her,” meaning to win her love (167, 2.4.210).
Act 2, Scene 5 (167-68, Lance relates to Speed the heartfelt leave-taking of Proteus from Julia, and finds out about Valentine’s love for Silvia.)
Lance and Speed trade observations and quibbles on the subject of when a person knows he or she is welcome somewhere. Lance says sagely, “I reckon this always, that a man is never undone till he be hanged, nor never welcome to a place till some certain / shot be paid, and the hostess say, ‘Welcome’” (167, 2.5.3-5). [17] Then Lance tells Speed how Proteus parted from Julia back in Verona. Speed informs Lance that his master, Valentine, has “become a hot lover” here in Milan (168, 2.5.42). The two servants make their way towards an alehouse.
Act 2, Scene 6 (168-69, Scheming to win Silvia’s affection, Proteus decides to let Silvia’s father know that the couple intend to elope.)
Proteus now proves himself as changeable as his name suggests, and his purpose in the soliloquy that constitutes the present short scene drives him to ask Love regarding the “perjury” he is about to commit against Valentine and Julia, “Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it” (168, 2.6.5, 7-8). Well, making the worse cause appear the better is always a possible employment for the art of rhetoric. [18]
The selfishness and speciousness of Proteus’s pep-talk is obvious. With regard to Julia and Valentine, he argues, “Julia I lose, and Valentine I lose; / If I keep them, I needs must lose myself; / If I lose them, thus find I by their loss / For Valentine, myself, for Julia, Silvia” (168, 2.6.19-22). He compares Julia to a “swarthy Ethiop” (168, 2.6.26), intending this figure as an insult against Julia’s “fairness,” and says further, “I will forget that Julia is alive” (168, 2.6.27). Truly, Proteus sounds worse here than the mistakenly bewitched Lysander does in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, awaking to his beloved Hermia and finding her tedious and repulsive. [19]
Act 2, Scene 7 (169-70, Julia thinks it best to trail after Proteus to Milan, and asks her waiting-woman Lucetta to help her adopt the disguise of a male “page” or attendant.)
While all the above is going on in Milan, back in Verona Julia asks her waiting-woman, Lucetta, to “lesson me and tell me some good mean / How with my honor I may undertake / A journey to my loving Proteus” (169, 2.7.5-7). Lucetta demurs, but Julia will not be deterred from seeking the “divine perfection” that is Sir Proteus (169, 2.7.13).
The two women get into a debate about the nature and management of love, if that term may be allowed. Lucetta says she seeks only to “qualify the fire’s extreme rage, / Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason” (169, 2.7.22-23). Julia switches the metaphor for the course of love to water, saying, “The current that with gentle murmur glides, / Thou know’st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage” (169, 2.7.25-26). But where Julia fears scandal, Lucetta convinces her she must leave that fear behind—if you’re worried about that, she tells Julia, “then stay at home and go not” (170, 2.7.62).
At this point, we are to understand, Julia’s love for Proteus is just as impossibly idealistic as his was for her before he met the supposedly divine Silvia. [20] As for her Proteus, she says, “His words are bonds, his oaths are oracles, / His love sincere, his thoughts immaculate, / His tears pure messengers sent from his heart, / His heart as far from fraud as heaven from earth” (170, 2.7.75-78). Alas, she is about to find out otherwise, as we in the audience already know—a classic instance of “dramatic irony.” [21]
Julia will dress up as a male page to protect her virtue from unsavory men along the way—an early instance of a plot element we will see again in other Shakespearean comedies. The idea is her own, though she is content to leave the particulars to Lucetta’s close care. Julia even adds a strong element of imagination to the mix: her hair, she says, will be elaborately done up “With twenty odd-conceited true-love knots” since “To be fantastic may become a youth / Of greater time than I shall show to be” (170, 2.7.46-48). She will keep, that is, a bit of feminine concern for elegance, for style in her male page’s disguise. [22]
ACT 3
Synopsis Act 3: Proteus betrays Valentine by retailing his elopement scheme to the Duke of Milan; pretending still to be the imminently exiled Valentine’s friend, Proteus leads him into exile and plots to gain access to Silvia through his efforts allegedly on behalf of Turio. Lance, with his recounting of his own courtship of a milkmaid, maintains our distance from Valentine’s romantic idealism and Proteus’s conspiratorial knavery in the service of “love.” In the third act, the effects of Proteus’s dishonesty and selfishness are everywhere.
Act 3, Scene 1 (171-78, Proteus reveals Valentine’s elopement scheme to Silvia’s father the Duke, who promptly banishes Valentine from Milan; pretending still to be Valentine’s friend, Proteus tells him that Silvia’s father has locked her up, and leads the grieving young man into exile; Lance, meanwhile, tells Speed about his own thoroughly materialistic pursuit of a mate.)
Proteus’s revelation of Valentine’s secret plan to elope with Silvia is cringeworthy, as he takes pains to make himself appear virtuous rather than simply the cad he is. He tells the Duke, “when I call to mind your gracious favors / Done to me, undeserving as I am, / My duty pricks me on to utter that / Which else no worldly good should draw from me” (171, 3.1.6-9). It isn’t “duty” that drives Proteus, but selfishness and lust.
The Duke diminishes the revelatory impact of the information by letting Proteus know that he already more or less understood as much, but he seems thankful all the same. He gives us one further bit of information, which is that his suspicions about Silvia’s disloyalty to him have led him to become very strict with her: as he says, “I nightly lodge her in an upper tower, / The key whereof myself have ever kept; / And thence she cannot be conveyed away” (171, 3.1.35-37). [23]
The better to trap Valentine, the Duke, apparently a widower, pretends to be a suitor to a woman he means to marry. He admits to Valentine that he is very much out of practice at the courtship game, and asks him frankly for advice. [24] A further wrinkle is that the young lady is supposedly “kept severely from resort of men” and worse yet, “Her chamber is aloft, far from the ground …” (173, 3.1.108, 114).
Valentine fails to reflect on how suspicious the Duke’s whole setup is, and foolishly spools out the basics of his own “ladder” plan for Silvia. The Duke pretends to take an interest in how to conceal the necessary ladder and tackle, and asks to examine Valentine’s bulky cloak. Unfortunately for the young man, he has already concealed his own equipment in that very cloak, so it’s “curtains” for him. The Duke sternly—if elegantly and replete with classical references to the reckless Phaëton such as “Wilt thou reach stars because they shine on thee?”—banishes Valentine from Milan and Silvia (174, 3.1.153-55).
Young Valentine can do little but obey, and, as he puts it, stay and “attend on death” or, departing, “fly away from life” (174, 3.1.185-86). Proteus pretends to be sorrowful at the banishment of his friend, and gives him information that only makes him feel the sting of the affair still more intensely. Silvia’s angry father, he says, has locked her up in “close prison … / With many bitter threats of biding there” for her appeals in Valentine’s favor (175, 3.1.232-33). Proteus further promises to deliver Valentine’s letters in exile to Silvia, but for now, he must depart from Milan.
Lance soon enters the scene, diverting our attention from the hapless romantic Valentine to his own practical, thoroughly materialistic way of thinking about finding a mate. Lance, that is, plans a future with a certain “milkmaid,” and proceeds to list for Speed’s benefit the particulars of this woman. The “catalog of her condition” (176, 3.1.267) that he offers includes such things as “she can fetch and carry” and “she can / milk” (176, 3.1.267).
The list, as read through by Speed, goes on to mention the woman’s vices as well: she is proud and perhaps also somewhat lecherous, and potentially quite unfaithful. None of these vices, among others, bother Lance enough to give him pause. [25] All this itemizing of vices and virtues has put Speed in danger of betraying his own name’s best quality—he’s at risk of being late to accompany Valentine out of Milan, so off he goes.
Act 3, Scene 2 (178-80, the Duke of Milan asks Proteus to help him induce Silvia to accept Turio as a suitor; Proteus agrees, offering to slander Valentine and rustle up some musicians for Turio so he can serenade Silvia.)
The Duke promises Turio that Silvia’s affection for Valentine is not lasting, that “This weak impress of love is as a figure / Trenchèd in ice, which with an hour’s heat / Dissolves to water and doth lose his form” (178, 3.2.6-8). Proteus furthers this notion by contributing the following thought: “The best way is to slander Valentine / With falsehood, cowardice, and poor descent: / Three things that women highly hold in hate” (179, 3.2.31-33). It’s easy for the Duke to enlist the highly motivated Proteus in his scheme to redirect Silvia’s affection from Valentine to Turio.
What Proteus advises is that Turio should write some decent sonnets to pique Silvia’s interest: “Say that upon the altar of her beauty / You sacrifice your tears, your sighs, your heart …” (180, 3.2.72-73). Turio’s addition to the scheme is that he will hire “some gentlemen well skilled in music” (180, 3.2.91). Now how could a genius-level plan like that fail? Of course, it will serve Proteus’s turn well, whatever the powers of poetry may or may not be. [26] All Proteus really wants from this “wooing” operation is to gain access to Silvia, and this contrivance should do it. [27]
ACT 4
Synopsis Act 4: Valentine becomes the captain of a band of robbers who have captured him; Proteus’s wooing of Silvia falls flat when she scorns his singing and suit; Lance relates more stories about his ill-behaved dog, Crab; Proteus hires Julia as “Sebastian” to deliver his letter and ring to Silvia, who rejects them and expresses solidarity with the wronged Julia. In this act, then, Silvia’s goodness comes to the fore and Julia’s intrepidity is advanced as well, with Proteus’s pursuit of Silvia sinking into insignificance.
Act 4, Scene 1 (180-82, outlaws seize Speed and Valentine after they depart from Milan into the woods; Valentine agrees to sign on as the robber band’s captain.) Silvia persuades Sir Eglamour to accompany her on her journey to find Valentine in Mantua
This scene is among the play’s weakest and most implausible, though it functions well enough to “place” Valentine close enough to Milan to allow for an easy resolution of the action. Presumably on their way to Mantua, Valentine and Speed are set upon by a merry band of outlaws, young men banished, as they go on to reveal, for their several crimes of passion. Improbably enough, the Third Outlaw’s story is essentially the same as that of Valentine himself: “Myself was from Verona banishèd / For practicing to steal away a lady, / An heir, and near allied unto the Duke” (181, 4.1.46-48).
These outlaws are all strangely civil in their demeanor and back stories, and after questioning Valentine desultorily and receiving for their reward a couple of lies about the young man’s sojourn and alleged crimes (along with the useful information that he speaks several languages and, above all, he’s banished—handy things to include in the resume of a highway robber, one presumes), they invite him to serve as their captain.
Since the alternative is to be killed, the robbers’ offer sounds like an excellent deal to Valentine, and he accepts with only a few conditions. They must, he insists, “do no outrages / On silly women or poor passengers.” When he receives as his answer that the robbers “detest such vile base practices” (180, 4.1.70-72), all is set. No doubt one of the purposes served by this scene is to justify or at least excuse Valentine’s own “crime of passion,” meaning his intention to abscond with his true love, Silvia. After all, these robbers aren’t bad fellows!
Act 4, Scene 2 (182-85, Proteus serenades Silvia, ostensibly for Turio’s benefit; while the disguised “page” Julia looks on, Proteus sings for Silvia and courts her, but he gets her to promise him only a portrait of herself.)
Proteus admits to his hapless condition at the scene’s outset, saying that Silvia “bids me think how I have been forsworn / In breaking faith with Julia, whom I loved” (182, 4.2.10-11). But like a male suitor in the Petrarchan tradition, Proteus’s love for this unattainable “love object” does nothing but increase.
Julia, in a melancholic mood and dressed as a male page named Sebastian, is shepherded onto the scene by the Host to hear the singing and see the singer, who is apparently Proteus. The song that Proteus sings is certainly charming, and has since been given modern arrangements. [28] Part of the middle stanza runs, “Is she kind as she is fair? / For beauty lives with kindness. / Love doth to her eyes repair / To help him of his blindness …” (183, 4.2.42-45).
Julia is not at all pleased by this music, fine as it is—she tells the host, “the musician likes me not,” and then defends this statement in terms that he must find cryptic: “He plays false, father” and the like (183, 4.2.54, 56).
When all the others are gone, Proteus gets his chance to speak alone with Silvia, who persists in scorning him in no uncertain terms: she calls him a “Subtle, perjured, false, disloyal man” and says further, “I am so far from granting thy request / That I despise thee for thy wrongful suit …” (184, 4.2.88, 94-95). Proteus then confesses to having loved Julia, but he shocks the disguised, concealed Julia by saying “But she is dead” (184, 4.2.99).
Humiliated at Silvia’s continued failure to find him palatable, Proteus asks only for her picture, as one is displayed in her chamber, and says, “to that I’ll sigh and weep …” and “to your shadow will I make true love” (184, 4.2.115,118). By “shadow,” Proteus means, as the Norton editor suggests, “image” (i.e., the image in the painting). In this strange request, Silvia obliges her frustrated suitor.
Act 4, Scene 3 (185-86, Silvia, in her quest to get beyond her unwanted suitors Turio and Proteus, convinces Sir Eglamour to accompany her to Mantua, where Valentine should be by now.)
Silvia calls upon the chivalrous knight Sir Eglamour, a man of genuine experience whom she praises highly. He is one, she says, who has been a lover in his time, and who is “Valiant, wise, remorseful, well accomplished” (185, 4.3.13). [29] Will this romance hero graciously accompany a damsel along dangerous highways to Mantua, where Silvia supposes Valentine has by now traveled? He certainly will: “I will not fail your ladyship,” says the knight (186, 4.3.45).
Act 4, Scene 4 (186-90, Lance relates how he has often suffered for the ill-behaved antics of his dog, Crab; Proteus is abashed to learn that Lance has offered this same dog to Silvia as a gift; Proteus hires Julia, disguised as the page “Sebastian,” and sends her to Silvia with a ring and a letter; Silvia won’t accept the gifts, but still sends Proteus her portrait, and expresses her solidarity with the wronged Julia.)
Stressing the value of forbearance, Lance relates how his dog, Crab, whom he was supposed to give Silvia for a gift, stole the delicate lady’s “capon’s leg” and then went under the dining table and urinated on her skirt. “’Hang him up,’ / says the Duke,” according to Lance (186, 4.4.19-20). But thanks to his ever-patient owner, Crab suffers no such fate. Lance falsely confesses to having committed the offense, and the official dog-whipper whips him out of the banquet chamber. Lance obviously loves this rascal of a dog, and boasts, “I’ll be / sworn I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, / otherwise he had been executed!” (187, 4.4.26-28) [30]
Lance has apparently offered Crab to Silvia as a gift, and when Proteus finds out about it, he orders this servant out of his sight—he had bought a little dog for the purpose, but Lance says that dog was stolen from him.
Proteus hires Julia in her disguise as the page, Sebastian, to deliver to Silvia a ring and a letter, saying, “She loved me well delivered it to me” (187, 4.4.68). In other words, it’s the very ring that Julia herself had given him. Julia expresses her sadness, saying of herself (unbeknownst to Proteus), “She dreams on him that has forgot her love; / You dote on her that cares not for your love. / ‘Tis pity love should be so contrary …” (188, 4.4.77-79). [31] Proteus is unmoved by this display of heartfelt emotion, and reminds Julia that he means also to claim the portrait that Sylvia promised him.
Julia is miserable, and sums up her predicament as follows: “I am my master’s true confirmèd love, / But cannot be true servant to my master / Unless I prove false traitor to myself.” Her solution? “Yet will I woo for him, but yet so coldly / As, heaven knows, I would not have him speed” (188, 4.4.99-103). These seemingly binding opposite truths or principles—namely that Julia is Proteus’s true love, but must, to obey him as seems right to her, woo another woman to replace her in his affection—Julia proposes to solve by wooing very badly. Clever girl! [32]
Upon arriving at Silvia’s chamber, Julia is handed the portrait that Silvia has promised Proteus. It seems likely (at least arguably so) that Julia’s first move is deliberately to give Silvia the letter that Proteus once sent her, meaning Julia, rather than Silvia. She takes it back and gives her the “correct” one, but it’s too late—Silvia tears up Proteus’s letter to her, and wants to see the first letter. Silvia also refuses the ring that we know belongs to Julia, and makes a present of it to her.
Silvia shows a great deal of empathy, even solidarity, with Julia in her plight, saying, among other things, “Alas, poor lady, desolate and left!” (190, 4.4.169) Still, when her rival Silvia has left, Julia can’t help but wonder if she herself is more beautiful and worthy of esteem than her, or can be made such. She says, “What should it be that he respects in her / But I can make respective in myself, / If this fond Love were not a blinded god? (190, 4.4.189-91)
As the scene concludes, Julia aligns her quest with reason—always a dicey proposition in love matters. She says to Silvia’s portrait, “were there sense in his idolatry, / My substance should be statue in thy stead. (Sense, as the Norton editor points out, here means “reason.”) Were it not that Silvia has shown her so much kindness, Julia admits (again to the portrait), she would not be so generous towards her rival in return: “I’ll use thee kindly for thy mistress’ sake / That used me so; or else, by Jove I vow, / I should have scratched out your unseeing eyes / To make my master out of love with thee!” (190, 4.4.197-200)
ACT 5
Synopsis Act 5: the play achieves its comic resolutions in an off-puttingly abrupt way, with Silvia being captured by Valentine’s band of robbers, only to be rescued by Proteus, who, frustrated with her continued rejection of him, attempts to rape her; Valentine stops the attack, and forgives his supposedly remorseful friend, even offering to “gift” Silvia to him as a sign of their renewed male-male friendship; in the end, Valentine is united with Silvia, and Julia’s reproaches of Proteus result in their reunification, too; soon, everyone will head back to Milan for their weddings. The robbers are pardoned as well.
Act 5, Scenes 1-3 (190-91, in Scene 1, Silvia and Sir Eglamour begin their journey to find Valentine; in Scene 2 on 191-92, it’s realized that Silvia has left Milan with Sir Eglamour, and the Duke, Proteus, and Turio prepare to catch up with them; in Scene 3 on 192, Valentine’s outlaws capture Silvia, and Sir Eglamour runs away.)
Taken together, the first three scenes of Act 5 simply set us up for the play’s abrupt resolution. Silvia and Sir Eglamour journey out into the forest on their trip to Mantua, where they suppose Valentine must be by now. The Duke of Milan figures out that this has happened, and he, Proteus, and Turio get ready to catch up with Silvia and Sir Eglamour. But in Scene 3, Valentine’s semi-genteel band of outlaws captures Silvia, while the ostensibly heroic Eglamour nimble-foots it out of the environs. What would Sir Lancelot say?! So much for the idea that names drive destiny.
The place where the key characters converge, a robbers’ den where men, as Valentine says in Scene 4, “make their wills their law” (193, 5.4.14), will serve as a clearing-house wherein the playwright may peremptorily dispense the fates of the comic couples.
Act 5, Scene 4 (193-96, Valentine watches as Proteus, who has rescued Silvia from the outlaw band, first tries to win her love and then, when she rejects his advances, attempts to rape her; Valentine stops Proteus, who promptly expresses remorse, whereupon Valentine gives Silvia to Proteus; Julia faints and, upon recovering, reveals her identity and reproaches Proteus for faithlessness; Proteus again expresses remorse, and Julia accepts the gesture; the outlaws usher in the Duke of Milan and Turio; when the latter refuses to defend his right to marry Silvia, the Duke determines that Valentine will be his son-in-law.)
The fifth act as a whole is wafer-thin both plotwise and thematically. A more developed comedy, like, say, Twelfth Night or As You Like It, would have brought in some of the other characters to round off their stories. Malvolio, Feste, Touchstone, Jaques, and others have something to say towards the end. But in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, we hear nothing more of Messrs. Lance and Crab, the cowardly knight Sir Eglamour, or the lively servant Speed. So if there’s a “green world” in the present early play, [33] it’s nothing more than the “greenness” (i.e., inexperience) of the journeyman playwright himself.
One minor instance is worth noting before we move on to the more important instance involving the marriage-based resolution. Sir Eglamour’s skipping out on Silvia in her time of need might be viewed as an irony-laced joke on the romance tradition. Still, this device can do no more than gesture faintly in that direction. For it to bear significant weight, there would have to be a reasonably nuanced conception of romantic love available for exploration in the play, whereas nothing of the sort is discernible. Nothing is satisfyingly resolved—or not resolved—in the fifth act because there is nothing (plot, themes, personalities, ambiguities, and so forth) much to resolve, or fail interestingly to resolve.
In any event, just twenty lines or so into Act 5, Scene 4, Proteus has rescued Silvia from the robbers’ clutches, only to find that she still hates him and loves Valentine. “I do detest false perjured Proteus,” says Silvia, “Therefore be gone; solicit me no more” (193, 5.4.39-40). [34] Even the densest male suitor—for which title Proteus is a contender—couldn’t say “Well, that went swimmingly!” after such a repulse.
Shockingly, in a rage of frustration and jealousy, Proteus attempts to rape Silvia, saying, “Nay, if the gentle spirit of moving words / Can no way change you to a milder form, / I’ll woo you like a soldier, at arm’s end, / And love you ‘gainst the nature of love—force ye” (194, 5.4.55-58). Proteus simply drops all pretense of civil wooing, all reliance on rhetoric, song, and poetry, and manifests his desire for Silvia as frankly grounded in sexualized power or force.
Silvia utters what will turn out to be her final words in the play: “O heaven!” and fortunately, Valentine is there on the spot to stop Proteus cold in his criminal act, yelling out, “Ruffian! Let go that rude uncivil touch, / Thou friend of an ill fashion!” (194, 5.4.61-62)
What follows is, if possible, even more shocking than what has just transpired. Proteus expresses what Valentine takes as sincere remorse: “My shame and guilt confounds me. / Forgive me, Valentine. If hearty sorrow / Be a sufficient ransom for offense, / I tender’t here” (194, 5.4.74-77). There is no hint of an apology to the victim of the attempt, Silvia, by either Proteus or Valentine. The latter man, not wanting to appear hard-hearted, immediately declares that his friend’s remarks are, indeed, sufficient ransom.
Valentine, then, evidently believes no one should be so cruel as not to entirely forgive the attempted violation of a woman if the assailant is truly sorry, and what’s more, he makes a jaw-droppingly “generous” offer to Proteus: “that my love may appear plain and free, / All that was mine in Silvia I give thee” (194, 5.4.83-84). Silvia is not consulted about this “offer,” and presumably, Proteus would have accepted it were it not that the disguised Julia now passes out and, upon awaking, reminds him of her own claim upon his love: she gives him (“accidentally on purpose”?) the ring that he had given her back in Verona. [35]
Two things need addressing about this scene. First, the entire fourth scene is pervaded by the classical and Renaissance concept of male-to-male friendship, amicitia perfecta. [36] In keeping with the reductive presentation of this concept in Two Gentlemen, it amounts to an intense homosocial bonding between two men, one that in this case is obviously far stronger than either man’s attachment to any woman. Thus, Silvia’s attitude matters not a whit as she is first nearly raped and then nearly offered to the would-be rapist as a token of male friendship. In the world this iteration of amicitia sketches for us, women simply don’t matter, and men hold all the power.
The second thing to note is what Harold Bloom suggests is the near-indiscriminacy of the adolescent male sex drive. Even when Proteus realizes that his dream of successfully courting Silvia in full romantic fashion is dead, he still thinks she’ll do quite nicely as his “love object.” [37] Valentine manifestly agrees with something along these lines, too, since he “offers” Silvia to Proteus without bothering to consult her, or recognizing dimly that she actually hates Proteus. This is the notion of sexuality that modern-day pornography of the more unsavory sort promotes: females as empty vessels for the realization of frustrated men’s desires.
Julia, at least, has some purchase, some power, in this play, though it’s hard to see why that should be so more than in the case of Silvia, who has shown loyalty to both Julia and Valentine, even if the latter doesn’t deserve it. She reproaches Proteus roundly, and he, predictably, blames not himself but the abstraction, “man” (195, 5.4.108). He comes around in a desultory fashion, asking rhetorically, “What is in Silvia’s face but I may spy / More fresh in Julia’s, with a constant eye?” (195, 5.4.112-13) It’s hard to read that as anything but insulting to Julia, but if so, she refrains from criticizing the slight.
Still, in the end, both couples seem to be set for a double marriage, even though we hear nothing from Silvia. We just hear about her since the cowardly Turio decides that he isn’t interested in defending his alleged claim to her. Once again, Silvia is handed over from one man to another.
The Duke of Milan adds to the absurdity of it all by forgiving and praising Valentine for really doing very little: “Know then, I here forget all former griefs, / Cancel all grudge, repeal thee home again, / Plead a new state in thy unrivaled merit, / To which I thus subscribe …” (196, 5.4.139-42). What exactly is “unrivaled” about Valentine’s purely typical and perfectly banal “merit”? Standing up to the coward Turio? It’s impossible to say.
Well, to balance this commentary’s rather harsh criticisms of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, it’s fair to note that the play includes a number of plot devices (identity disguisings, the ring device, a forest where characters go to explore their problems, and so forth) with which Shakespeare worked more deftly in subsequent plays. It also contains some genuinely lovely passages where Shakespeare’s linguistic gifts shine forth.
For example, Act 1, Scene 3, lines 84-87 are very fine. In them, Proteus laments his father’s decision to send him away from Verona and Julia, beginning with, “Oh, how this spring of love resembleth / The uncertain glory of an April day ….” Moreover, the song “Who is Silvia? What is she / That all our swains commend her?” that Proteus sings in Act 4, Scene 2, lines 37-51 is excellent.
But on the whole, Shakespeare’s audiences had to wait for the more mature handling and exploration of the conventions, themes, and plot devices that figure so significantly in the bulk of Shakespeare’s more practiced plays. We might suggest that Shakespeare was depending on his audience to recognize the silliness and sheer implausibility of The Two Gentlemen of Verona’s plot and thematic handling, which would lead us to treat the play as something like a deliberate sendup on light comedy, but that must remain conjectural. [38]
Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93861-6.
Copyright © 2025 Alfred J. Drake
Document Timestamp: 11/24/2025 1:21 PM
ENDNOTES
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[1] As the Norton editor points out on pg. 149, it’s odd that Valentine is going by ship since Verona and Milan are both landlocked. But no matter. Such facts never troubled Shakespeare. In The Winter’s Tale, “Bohemia” is located by an ocean, and many of his places are speckled with oddities like gothic fairies living just outside ancient Athens (A Midsummer Night’s Dream), and the island in The Tempest, which must be somewhere near the Mediterranean coast but seems more like a tropical island in the Bermudas. Cymbeline appears for all the world to be set both in ancient Britain and Renaissance Italy; “Vienna” in Measure for Measure boasts inhabitants who mostly or entirely sport Italian names, and so forth.)
[2] With regard to the importance of amicitia perfecta among the Greeks and Romans, see the Shakespeare’s Globe April 6, 2018 essay “Shakespeare and Friendship.” Accessed 8/22/2024. See also Cicero’s fine treatise De Amicitia, or “On Friendship,” and Seneca’s Letters, which deal with the concept of friendship insightfully. See especially Letter IX. The story of Valentine and Proteus may also owe something to Boccaccio’s story in The Decameron of Tito and Gisippo, as reflected in Thomas Elyot’s 1531 text The Governour. See Bullough, Geoffrey, editor. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. I. Early Comedies, Poems, Romeo and Juliet. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1961, first pub. 1957. Pg. 203, Two Gentlemen is introduced on pages 203-11, followed by source and analog texts.
[3] ὁ φίλος εστιν ἄλλος αὐτός, or ἔστι γàρ ὁ φίλος ἄλλος αὐτός. “A friend is another self.” The quote comes from Aristotle in The Nichomachean Ethics, Ch. 4. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/19/2025.
[4] The Greek god Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, was notorious for his shape-shifting prowess. The son of Poseidon, he was a slippery, changeable god indeed, as Odysseus learns from King Menelaus of Sparta, who has his own adventures to recount in The Odyssey, Book 4. See The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Books, 1997. ISBN-13: 978-0140268867. Online, see Samuel Butler’s translation. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/19/2025.
[5] As the Norton editor points out in Note 4, pg. 149, the classical story of “Hero and Leander” became one of Christopher Marlowe’s excellent poems.
[6] See Robert Burton’s (“Democritus Junior’s”) The Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621, and followed by several more editions. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/19/2025.
[7] See “Love Letters in Shakespeare…” in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare and Beyond blog. Feb. 12, 2017. Accessed 11/22/2025.
[8] The French original text for “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know” is « Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point. » Blaise Pascal, Pensées, #277. HathiTrust, Trotter translation. Accessed 11/19/2025. The sentence isn’t about romantic love, but it is often read that way, to good effect.
[9] With regard to Antonio, his brother, and Pantino’s notions about what sort of travels Antonio’s son, Proteus, ought to undertake and why, see the EBSCO primer-article “Popularization of the Grand Tour.” Basically, the idea developed in the late sixteenth century that a young person would benefit from spending several years abroad, particularly in Italy but also elsewhere in Europe. This sort of experience is clearly what Antonio’s brother wants Proteus to undergo.
[10] This “grand tour” ideological construction accords well with what the feminist author Simone de Beauvoir suggests in her great work The Second Sex. She points out that while women in most ages have been more or less confined to and defined by their domestic roles—as in the Victorian “angel of the hearth” concept—men, by contrast, have always been defined by their experiences in the wider world. In de Beauvoir’s terms, by this rubric, men are seen as “authentic,” and women as “inauthentic.” It’s worth mentioning, though, that well-to-do young women were not forbidden from going on European tours, even if it was less common than it was for young men. See Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex. Trans. Constance Borde. Vintage, 2011. ISBN-13: 978-0307277787.
[11] As the Norton editors point out in Note 1, pg. 155, the people and places referred to in this third scene of Act 1 are rather confusing: Proteus is mistakenly said to be packed off to “the Emperor’s court,” not to the Duke of Milan’s court.
[12] With regard to the senex iratus or angry old man/father, he is one of several stock characters in Greek and Roman comedy; his role is generally to impose obstacles against desire and to make a fool of himself. The miles gloriosus or braggart soldier is another such foolish character—his vanity and ego get him into trouble every time. In Shakespeare, Egeus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one obvious example of the senex iratus, while Paroles in All’s Well That Ends Well and Don Armado in Love’s Labor’s Lost are two fine examples of the miles gloriosus. It is also an element of Falstaff’s character in the Henry IV plays and in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
[13] Shakespeare’s Petrarchan sendup “Sonnet 130” comes to mind, which begins, “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red ….” (Poetryfoundation.org.) Accessed 11/21/2025. Petrarch, an early Italian humanist scholar, was a great poet, too; by Shakespeare’s time, his style grounded in extremes of emotional experience had become so famous that it was easily parodied.
[14] See, for example, the melancholy Jaques’s description of the lover in his “Seven Ages of Man” performance. He refers to “the lover, / Sighing like furnace, / with a woeful ballad / Made to his mistress’ eyebrow.” Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731. See 696, 2.7.147-49.
[15] See Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. Helena says of love that it involves neither judgment nor clarity of vision: “Things base and vile, holding no quantity, / Love can transpose to form and dignity” (411, 1.1.232-33).
[16] Note on how animals were treated in Shakespeare’s time: they were more or less considered capable of moral depravity and civic infractions, and were punished for them, absurd as that seems to us. All the same, in modern times, animals who harm humans are generally put to death, even when there is no question of the incident being due to the animal’s transgressive behavior.
[17] The Norton editor points out in a marginal note that the word “shot” here means “tavern bill.”
[18] On the importance of rhetoric in drama, see “Shakespeare, improvisation, and the art of rhetoric.” Folger Shakespeare Library’s Shakespeare and Beyond blog. Aug. 4, 2017. Accessed 11/22/2025.
[19] Shakespeare, William. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 406-53. See 422, 2.2.11-14: “Content with Hermia? No, I do repent / The tedious minutes I with her have spent. / Not Hermia but Helena I love. / Who will not change a raven for a dove?”
[20] Exploring what a professor of this commentator’s called “idealizing eroticism” is a mainstay in Shakespeare, and it is presented as both understandable and compelling, and yet very dangerous because of the vulnerability it opens in a person caught up in it.
[21] Dramatic irony refers to the reader’s or audience’s having knowledge of something that a character in a play doesn’t. It is often used to good effect.
[22] Key instances of this gender-disguising plot and thematic element occur in Twelfth Night, with Viola disguising herself as a page in the Duke of Illyria’s court, and Rosalind inhabiting the role of a young man to enter the Forest of Arden, only to role-play for Orlando the hard-to-please lady, “Rosalind.” In The Merchant of Venice, the heiress Portia habits herself as a brilliant young lawyer, Balthasar, so she can win her new husband Bassanio’s friend Antonio’s court case, while in Cymbeline, Imogen disguises herself as the youth Fidele, so she can safely search for her spouse, Posthumus Leonatus.
[23] On the folk tale dimension of some of Shakespeare’s motifs, see Artese, Charlotte, editor. Shakespeare and the Folktale: An Anthology of Stories. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton UP, 2019. ISBN-13: 978-0691190860..
[24] The advice that Valentine offers the Duke sounds rather like that offered in John Lyly’s Sapho and Phaon 2.4. See Bullough, Geoffrey, editor. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare. Vol. I. Early Comedies, Poems, Romeo and Juliet. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: Columbia UP, 1961, first pub. 1957. pp. 204-05.
[25] Shakespeare’s Petrarchan sendup “Sonnet 130” again comes to mind, especially the lines, “I grant I never saw a goddess go; / My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground….” (Poetryfoundation.org.) Accessed 11/22/2025.
[26] Proteus himself claims to attribute a great deal of power to poetry: says he, “For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews, / Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones …” (180, 3.2.77-78). One of the best critical treatises of the Renaissance was Sir Philip Sidney’s “A Defense of Poesie and Poems.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/24/2025. In it, he writes that the poet “goeth hand in hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.” Sidney never really argues that poets leave nature behind, so he remains firmly within the orbit of the then-prevailing mimetic or representational school of criticism. All the same, he attributes an impressive degree of moral and imaginative power to poets and poetry.
[27] See Anjna Chouhan’s 14 Feb., 2017 essay, “Shakespeare and the Art of Wooing” (Shakespeare Birthplace Trust).
[28] In 1826, Franz Schubert composed a German version of this Shakespeare song, called “An Sylvia.” Recorded version on Wikipedia page. Accessed 11/22/2025.
[29] Shakespeare must have taken this knight’s name from a circa 1350 romance titled Sir Eglamour of Artois.
See the Wikipedia page on this medieval romance, along with this entry in the U. of York’s Database of Middle English Romance. For an online copy of the text, see Middle English Texts Series’ (METS) Sir Eglamour. Accessed 11/22/2025.
[30] On the treatment of animals during the Middle Ages, see the U of Groningen’s 27 Sept. 2022 article, “Medieval animal trials: like animals?” See also “Surviving Life as a Dog in the Middle Ages.” Medieval Madness, YouTube, and the same site’s “Cats during the Medieval Times.” Accessed 11/22/2025.
[31] Julia’s sentiment is not unlike that of Anne Elliot in Persuasion, as spoken to Captain Harville in Chapter XXIII: “All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one; you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/22/2025.
[32] One might loosely call these kinds of contradictory situations “antinomies.” In the general philosophical sense, an antinomy is a “contradiction, real or apparent, between two principles or conclusions, both of which seem equally justified.” Britannica.com, entry on “antinomy.” Such situations are fairly common in Shakespeare’s comedies. Consider, for example, the trap into which Viola falls in As You Like It: she is tasked with wooing Countess Olivia for Duke Orsino, but she herself is in love with Orsino. She can’t tell him this because she is serving at his court disguised as a page named Cesario.
[33] Chronologies tend to date The Two Gentlemen of Verona as the first or nearly the first of Shakespeare’s plays. the Oxford edition gives a date range of 1587-1591; the Norton edition gives 1591-1592; the Royal Shakespeare Co. edition offers “1590s”; the Riverside edition pegs the date as 1594; and E. K. Chambers places TGV at 1594-95. Next up generally come The Taming of the Shrew, the Henry VI plays, Titus Andronicus, and Richard III, with the last-mentioned play dated 1592-1593 or 1592-1594. Some scholars divide Shakespeare’s career into four periods. For insight into this division, which is itself entirely dependent on the chronological sequence attributed to the plays, see Amanda Mabillard’s “Four Periods of Shakespeare’s Life” at www.shakespeare-online.com. Accessed 11/23/2025.
[34] Readers may remember the ghostly imprecation hurled by the dead Prince of Wales at Clarence in Act 1, Scene 4 of Richard III: “false, fleeting, perjured Clarence.” The application of a similar phrase in the earlier play, Two Gentlemen of Verona, puts Proteus in very bad company!
[35] What we see in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is perhaps a tame version of the ancient “magic ring device,” which figures heavily in medieval romance literature, including the Arthurian legends. See Wendy Doniger’s The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry. Oxford UP, 2017. ISBN-13: 978-0190267117. Aside from the present play, we might recall, rings are significant in All’s Well That Ends Well, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline, and The Comedy of Errors.
[36] See Garber, Marjorie. Shakespeare after All. Anchor Books, 2004. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 43-56. Garber describes the kind of friendship in the present play as well as female-female and male-male friendships in a number of other plays (such as The Winter’s Tale, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and As You like It) as “a paradisal twinship prior to differentiation” (44). This “model” of friendship, she writes, “is presented as something that will be disrupted by heterosexuality, or, more accurately, by romantic love and a desire to marry” (44).
[37] See Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books, 1999. ISBN-13: 978-1573227513. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, 36-40. See pg. 40, where Bloom writes, “any one woman will do as well as another. All men, Shakespeare hints, are invited to substitute any two women’s names for Silvia and Julia.”
[38] Bloom, ibid, seems to take something like this view, which somewhat tempers an otherwise scathing and almost dismissive review.