Much Ado About Nothing - Forgiveness

Randall writes:

Not'ers,

And so we come back to Shakespeare. Ernst has proposed discussing a series of structural relationships, and I've been making notes on classical and Christian imagery. Not sure how far I'll get with it, and it's currently a bit under-cooked. So I thought I'd start off with a comparative observation.

Reading Much Ado About Nothing I am struck by how many echoes reverberate from Shakespeare's past and upcoming works: Beatrice and Kate, Don John and Iago, Benedict and Berowne, Friar Francis's plot for Hero to appear dead and Friar Lawrence's plot for Juliet to appear dead, Hero and Hermione (from Winter's Tale, not Harry Potter), to name a few. A broad question is, does the nature of genre, during the Renaissance, impel different characters into like situations? Or does Shakespeare the popular entertainer recycle character traits and situations in order to please an audience? I don't really know where to start with this.

One more: Claudio and Proteus. As a modern reader, I'm appalled at Claudio's treatment of Hero. Yes, he has been given "ocular proof" of her infidelity, but her protestations mean nothing to him and his separation from her at the wedding rather than when he learns of her "transgression" seems vindictive ("this rotten orange," he calls her in the public shaming). Whether Claudio is justified or not is moot. As a viewer, I know he's wrong, that Hero is innocent and undeserving, so my sympathies lie with her (though they leave her maidenhood intact). And while Leonato has planned an elaborate revenge, telling Claudio that his calumnies have killed Hero, his forgiveness seems overly generous to me in that he builds into the vengeance the easily dupable Claudio's remarriage to Hero.

Two years back, Ernst cited David Bevington's thesis about Two Gentlemen of Verona, quoting that it "is in part a comedy of forgiveness, anticipating later plays in which the romantic protagonist is equally culpable and yet equally forgiven: Much Ado, Measure for Measure, All’s Well, Cymbeline" (WSE, Feb. 19, 2007). Gil followed up my aggravation about the abrupt late Act 5 forgivenesses, writing:

"In his short monograph, Shakespeare and Forgiveness, our friend Bill Matchett writes of Two Gentlemen of Verona: 'Forgiveness [the general subject of his essay] first becomes central to the plot with Two Gentlemen. As a convenient device for letting comedy end happily, pardon can be handled briefly; forgiveness, which necessarily involves problems of character, cannot. In Two Gentlemen, in his attempt to handle character change as briefly as he handled pardon, Shakespeare fell on his face. There is much to be said of this delightful play in other contexts, but its hasty ending is a disaster involving far-fetched ingenuity from directors attempting to save or make sense of it. …

'What Shakespeare gives us here is the outline of forgiveness: without flesh, it is ridiculous. It is not just that poor Sylvia has not been consulted nor her forgiveness asked—that 'O heaven!' (a challenge for any actress) turns out to be her final line in the play. Concern for Sylvia is a modern objection to the whole male-dominated love-and-friendship archetype. The major problem is that, even within the assumptions of the pattern, we can trust neither Proteus’ conversion nor Valentine’s forgiveness when they are presented so schematically. Both repentance and forgiveness demand more scope if they are to carry conviction'" (WSE, March 4, 2007).

Certainly, with Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare has put some flesh on the forgiveness. Leonato provides Claudio with a necessary comeuppance; he's told that Hero has died, and he will have to marry, sight unseen, Leonato's niece as penance for his gullibility. Compared to Valentine's "Then I am paid," the strings attached to Leonato's "And so dies my revenge" are significant. But two things disturb me here. First, I don't think Leonato's "revenge" refers to the re-marriage. Instead it is his desire to punish Don Pedro and Claudio, implicit in his statement to his brother, "My soul doth tell me Hero is belied, /And that shall Claudio know; so shall the Prince /And all of them that thus dishonor her" (5.1.44-46). Do they come to know this? Yes. Does their knowledge make them sufficiently repentant? Maybe. Leonato's anger passes easily when Claudio says rather equivocatingly, "Impose to me what penance your invention /Can lay upon my sin. Yet sinned I not /But in mistaking" (5.1.285-287).

I love line 286: "…upon my sin. Yet sinned I not." When a comedy resolves, I want more than the plot to work out. I want character to resolve too. Two Gentlemen of Verona feels distinctly unsatisfying because Proteus fails to deserve or earn the forgiveness he receives. To a lesser degree, Claudio's statement comes pretty close to "it's not really my fault." In addition, Claudio's repentance is directed exclusively to Leonato.

This brings me to my second concern. I realize my expectations may be modern (as Matchett indicates), but it seems to me that the real apology should go to Hero, and that it is her forgiveness Claudio should also seek. To return to Matchett for a minute, he points out that in Two Gentlemen of Verona Sylvia's final line precedes the forgivenesses, coming in fact as Proteus tries to rape her. Then she is silent. When Hero unmasks in Act 5, she gets the last line on the subject: "One Hero died defiled, but I do live, /And surely as I live, I am a maid" (5.4.65-66). That's as close to a rebuke as one might expect given the boy's club of the early comedies. So Hero represents a big step forward over Sylvia when it comes to resolution. Yet hers are also the last words Claudio or Hero have for each other in the play. (Each has one more speech, contributing to the unification of Beatrice and Benedick.) So there is no moment when Claudio asks Hero for forgiveness.

Perhaps if Hero were a stronger character, such a moment would materialize. I think one of the weirdest aspects of the play for me is Don Pedro's wooing Hero for Claudius. I don't understand the context for this. It seems artificial. It keeps the characters from one another, which I feel undermines their dramatic relationship (especially compared to Beatrice and Benedick). And it really marginalizes Hero, because the relationship is decided by Don Pedro and Claudio. It's too bad they didn't make their wooing agreement in the form of a sonnet. And of course trouble ensues when Don John is able to suggest that Don Pedro did the wooing for himself.

More notable is that when Claudio and Hero become betrothed in Act 2, scene 1, Hero speaks not a word. Again, the discussion is between Don Pedro and Claudio. Beatrice chimes in to tell Hero to say something, but she doesn't until the penultimate speech in the scene, at line 367. At this point, she's been on stage for 160 lines. While Beatrice and Benedick spar and woo with words, Claudio and Hero woo with silence. Maybe if they talked a bit more, Claudio would not have been as susceptible to Don John's deceptions. What a curious couple.

Randall

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Performance Log (January 2009)

Two Gentlemen of Verona
Directed by Joe Dowling
Guthrie Theater
Minneapolis, MN
Jan. 25, 2009

When we discussed Two Gentlemen of Verona two years ago, I was intrigued by its unsatisfactory ending. Going to Joe Dowling's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona at the Guthrie I looked forward to seeing what he would do to make it seem less awkward. Dowling's approach to Act 5 in Merchant of Venice two years ago was one of the most satisfactory I've ever seen, although I complained at the time that its genius was not matched by an equally gratifying Act 4. Last year, Dowling's A Midsummer Night's Dream concluded with a wow-ing Pyramus and Thisbe. And whereas the Merchant succeeded with deft line readings and staging choices, the Midsummer excelled on the sheer chutzpah of some comic acting. Either way, it's clear Dowling cares about leaving an audience feeling like they've gotten their money's worth, believes the audience will make that judgment based on how entertained they feel they've been, and has been pretty successful enhancing Shakespearean comedies to that end. So, what to do with Two Gentlemen and its abrupt Act 5 conversions?

1. The medium is the message!

Not so fast. First, we'll want to examine the framing device Dowling provides for the play. This Two Gentlemen of Verona takes place as a 1950s live TV broadcast. And the Guthrie audience is the TV studio audience. Before the play and during intermission, we hear 1950s ad jingles for Kent cigarettes, Rice Krispies, Muriel cigars, and Maypo and theme songs from such late '50s shows as "Maverick," "I Love Lucy," "Robin Hood," "The Honeymooners," "Have Gun, Will Travel," "FBI," and "Mighty Mouse." We see big boxy cameras. We see tech people milling around. We see the perspective scale marked out on the gray studio floor so the cameramen can have a guide for pulling focus. We see two large television screens on either side of the stage showing the flat video-like gray images of the play being performed in front of us.

The characters in the play are also placed in the 1950s. Proteus (Jonas Goslow) and Valentine (Sam Bardwell), in jackets and narrow ties, are graduating from high school. Julia (Sun Mee Chomet) is having slumber parties. Silvia's dad is a businessman in Milan. The outlaws look like a biker gang escaped from a Gidget movie. And in the transitions from scene to scene Dowling inserts live musical performances, either actual or reminiscent of early rock and roll standards. Shakespeare might have been surprised to look down the cast list and see a character called "The Singer" (played by Sasha Andreev). He would have been even more surprised when he found that the singer sounded at times like Frank Sinatra and at others like Elvis Presley instead of Thomas Morley.

A modernized production always begs the reciprocal question of commentary, Shakespeare on setting and setting on Shakespeare. These are not the real 1950s that Dowling gives us, but the glossy magazine version of low-brow culture. That's interesting. Shakespeare is considered pretty high class now, and people pay a pretty penny to watch his stuff at the Guthrie, but synching this play up with the pop culture of rock and television and advertising, the dominant imagery of Dowling's vision, suggests that Shakespeare's play is equivalent pap. These particular cultural elements tend to exaggerate and or even caricature emotions, emphasizing and evoking desires, fears, passions, but they do so in a way that distorts beyond the expectations of comic commentary.

Take a song like Jeff Barry and Ben Raleigh's "Tell Laura I Love Her" (the genre of which is adapted into a theme for Julia by The Singer), a teen tragedy piece so over the top its hard not to laugh at it now: "No one knows what happened that day, / Or how his car overturned in flames." Listening to this sort of song, one doesn't focus on the ugliness of the accident or the senselessness of it or the stupidity involved. Instead the song encourages us to crave the situation in which Tommy's dying words, "tell Laura I love her," can have their greatest significance. To have something like this as Julia's theme suggests shallowness, the melodramatic yearnings of a young girl in love with love made immortal by gruesome catastrophe. Yet, ironically, it is Julia who stays stodgily devoted to Proteus, pursues him to Milan, and forgives him his trespasses. Her theme may imply simple devotion, but really it's trading in hormonal insanity.

Television does something similar. Take Paladin (Richard Boone) in "Have Gun, Will Travel" (the theme of which briefly entertains us as we wait for the play to begin), a gunfighter for hire who prefers to settle problems without resorting to violence. Yet somehow by the end of most episodes he's deftly dispatching bad guys with his gun. Television, at least in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, does not encourage you to examine the ironies of its narrative. In fact, complexities of character, motivation, and reality are frequently avoided so completely that one usually ends up rooting for a violent comeuppance at the end of the show, blissfully setting aside the contradictions in character implied or precedents that would be unacceptable in actual life. (The latter can often be casually swept away by referring to the lawlessness inherent in the myth of the American west. This same formula resurfaced most blatantly in the 1970s' show "Kung Fu," which featured David Carradine as a pacifist Shaolin Monk traveling in the old west who, despite his commitment to non-violence, employed debilitating martial arts by the end of each episode.)

Many of the TV shows whose themes Dowling employs are about justice or love, yet over and over again TV shows deny their own themes. In "The Honeymooners," Ralph Kramden lies to Alice, they make up (love and justice), but he does it again the next week; that's the inherent shallowness of early TV ― principles are forsaken for marketable climax, lessons learned one week are unlearned by the next.

And ads. Gosh. Every ad is a lie, designed to make us discount our natural skepticism and judiciousness and crave a product that may have no real relevance to our lives. Ads create deficits where they don't exist, offering to fill them, and values that are not valuable, suggesting our failure to live up to them makes us less happy. (Underarm wetness getting you down? Use this product which will clog up your pores ― your body's natural cooling system ― so that you can conform to our artificial standard of cleanliness!) Ads promote the ultimate in shallowness: reaction divorced from rational thought. In addition to the ad jingles, Dowling hangs a large billboard advertisement over a backstage area (it never plays a role in the production) like the eyes of T. J. Eckleberg in The Great Gatsby. It's there to remind us of the world in which Proteus, Valentine, Silvia, and Julia exist is one in which this shallowness has taken cultural root.

Or perhaps it's just an ambiance, the sole purpose to set the play in a particular time rather than connect the play's themes and characters to that time. I believe that if one stops to think for even a second, one moves from the latter to the former, from ambiance to commentary. So what does it do to Shakespeare's comedy to make this medium (television), this music (rock and roll), and the persistent reminder of art in the service of commerce (advertising) the conduit through which we explore themes of love, friendship, betrayal, and justice? Dowling's production suggests that Shakespeare's comedy is also a pop cultural moment, replete with the attendant shallownesses.

2. Live! From Culver City! It's Shakespeare Live!

This idea ― Two Gentlemen of Verona as pop culture ― is emphasized by the production's conceit. We're not watching a production of Two Gents; we're watching a live TV broadcast of a production of Two Gents. Why? Initially, I thought Dowling was simply drawing a parallel between a moment of early media in America and a moment of early comedy in Shakespeare's oeuvre ― both exhibit a kind of unrefined roughness and, despite the inherent complexities of both media, a kind of innocence.

The adaptive approach, however, takes us further. If early television enforces pat resolutions at the end of a pre-determined time frame regardless of the problems that need to be resolved, does that not account for the unfortunate brevity of resolution in Act 5? Proteus, in the act of raping Silvia, is stopped, apologizes, and is forgiven, with time left over for a word from our sponsor. The nature of televised narrative might also explain shallow friendship. Proteus throws over his sworn friend Valentine twice, once when he begins to pursue Valentine's love and once when he betrays Valentine to Silvia's father, but is quickly returned to his status as friend in the play's final moments, not so unusual in TV land where friendships (and love affairs!) between a protagonist and a guest star are forged, broken, and resurrected (and then subsequently non-existent) all in the space of 30 or 60 minutes.

In fact, if we accept the implications of Dowling's staging one might ask if Two Gentlemen of Verona makes a better television show than stage production? One of the most interesting experiences of this production is the dual experience of watching the play as both at the same time. Gil and I have written about the differences ― imaginative space vs. realistic space; audience-selected point of view vs. director-selected point of view; etc. ― between the two, and it's something of a mind-bender to get to do both at once. I frequently caught myself looking from the three-dimensional full-color action in front of me to the two-dimensional gray action depicted to one side, and usually I was doing it in order to see the action from a different perspective. One of the cameras was positioned at the back, showing an angle I would not otherwise have been able to see. There was something altogether Cubist about the experience.

The comparison, in the end, is about visuals. And except for the tremendous implications of television as a medium, put into play by five decades of experience and criticism, I don't think the visual rendering of Two Gentlemen as television added much to the immediate experience, largely because the device did not affect the language of the play. We are provided with two ways of seeing, but only one of hearing, which emanates exclusively from the stage, relegating the video screens to curiosities.

On the flip side, this idea of a live televised Shakespeare event reminds us of the great promise television once had, when a comic like Ernie Kovacs ad-libbed and invented his way through the transition from vaudeville to cathode ray tube, when Edward R. Murrow fought to use the new medium to increase our understanding of the world rather than cloud it, when Rod Serling found the perfect venue for establishing epigrammatic science fiction and fantasy storytelling. And Dowling's production reminds us of Paul Nickell's "Studio One" production of Coriolanus (1951) or the "Hallmark Hall of Fame" production of Macbeth (1954), anthology shows that sought to bring quality drama to people's living rooms. It also, I think, alludes to the Bill Colleran attempt to transport the live theater production of John Gielgud's Hamlet (starring Richard Burton) to a cinema audience by filming the show over two nights, then releasing it in 1964 for a limited engagement in movie houses.

Film itself was once a new medium, and in its silent period between 1899 and 1929, hundreds of films were made that drew on Shakespeare as a source. Kenneth Rothwell points out in his book, A History of Shakespeare on Screen, that Shakespeare accounted for less than one percent of the roughly 150,000 silent films made during the period, but it's still impressive that, given the primacy of language to what we imagine Shakespeare to be, silent filmmakers would have tapped those works at all. It may be that the purveyors of an infant medium sought to lend legitimacy to their work by turning to established art, specifically the greatest playwright ever. Nor is it surprising given early silent film's initial connection to the theater ― the first films depicted stories by directing a camera at a small stage area from a position approximately in the middle of what would have been the audience and letting it photograph the action unedited.

Early television displays some of the same concerns as early film, and shows that drew on established high art or relied on entertainment's theatrical ― vaudevillian ― antecedents remind us that a new medium's first attempts often include imitation. Dowling's production evokes this burgeoning moment in television history. A harried director herds actors, tries to get things set for taping, and counts down to the action both at the beginning of the play and after intermission. (The actor who does this is not listed as a character in the program.) There's a wonderful energy to this as a framing device, and I came away remembering how much I like watching vintage '50s TV both for its newness and its lack of established convention. I wonder if, when Shakespeare's work began to hit the stage the early 1590s, audiences felt the same way. I also wonder if it was Dowling's intention, in any way, to inspire the audience to remember a half-century old medium with fondness.

3. It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings!

I think this review is a little like a Dowling production (only less entertaining). Sixteen paragraphs later you're probably wondering, when are we going to get to the Shakespeare? When we look at all the stuff thrown at Shakespeare in this production, what we find is that an emphasis on audience supersedes the emphasis on Shakespeare. It's as if the operative question in the production is "what will leave the audience thinking they enjoyed this play?" rather than "what will make this a coherent text to a modern audience?" That's a subtle difference, but thinking back to Merchant of Venice, where Dowling seemed to play down the trial scene in favor of Portia and Bassanio's romance, to Midsummer Night's Dream with its high-production, Broadway-styled musical numbers, to this Two Gentlemen of Verona, the approach seems consistent.

So what? Purists complain that Shakespeare gets lost in all the hubbub. Elitists say it ain't really Shakespeare and that an audience swayed by it must be a buncha rubes. Others leave the theater thinking it was simply a lot of fun. What matters, I think, is its place in the cumulative effect. Every Shakespeare production we see adjusts our idea of what Shakespeare is, what belongs in a production, what makes good theater. Those of us who attend Shakespeare productions regularly wait for something competent that brings the texts we love to a full life, or something new that causes us to re-imagine the text in an unforeseen way, or something moving that connects us to the text in an indelible way. Dowling productions remind me how malleable Shakespeare can be, and whether one believes a show like Two Gentlemen of Verona does harm to Shakespeare or brings his work to an audience in a more accessible, highly entertaining way, what really matters is its modulation of the ongoing debate ― Shakespeare, language, culture, interpretation, comedy, what have you.

Well, I hear the fat lady singing. Somewhere a Joe Dowling production must be going on. I think I'll go watch TV.

Logged by Randall

Photos: (top) Valeri Mudek as Silvia, Randy Reyes as Speed, and Sam Bardwell as Valentine; (bottom) Jim Lichtscheidl as Lance and Wyatt Jensen as Crab, in Joe Dowling's Guthrie Theater production of Two Gentlemen of Verona. Photos by T. Charles Erickson.

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Curtain

Gentlemen, Ladies,

I am repeatedly amazed at the transformation each of these plays we read seems to go through as a result of our conversations. After reading a play, I have never been quite sure where to begin, and looking over our previous discussions I find that we all often get off to a slow start. Yet by the end of the second discussion period we have established a variety of lively strands, and my impression and appreciation for the play has deepened.

This was certainly the case for me with Two Gentlemen of Verona. I presented a set of relatively generic questions, with the exception of my specific concern about how one stages the abrupt set of forgivenesses at the end. Ernst invigorated the conversation with a wonderful set of posts examining the "central essence" of the play. Was it friendship? Forgiveness? Love? I especially enjoyed his presentation of and response to Bill Matchett's Shakespeare and Forgiveness take on Two Gentlemen of Verona. I agree that friendship is an underserved theme in the play, and that forgiveness may be central but is not resolved satisfactorily by the end. Ernst's further refining the play's essence to "pastoral romance" is compelling; in addition to revising my reading of the play in interesting ways, his comments put the play in a context that will be more accessible to our future readings of plays like As You Like It. And the inter-contextuality of these plays, as well as our perceived growth of Shakespeare the dramatist, is one of my favorite aspects of our group.

I also very much enjoyed Ernst's supplemental materials. I really don't think any other book club would have me up at 2:00 a.m. (with grades due soon) reading Boccaccio's Decameron, or stealing moments from a busy day to search the Internet for extant online copies of Damon and Pythias.

Gil took my complaint about sexism and turned it into a provocative piece on "coyness," which has both caused me to rethink some of the modern criticisms I have made in the past and deepened my understanding of the relationships between men and women in this play. Gil also alluded to a question I am looking forward to discussing again as we get further into Shakespeare's career, writing "I think by Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare is more sure-handed in his parody and put-down of the conventions of romantic love…". Among these conventions, it seems to me, is the Petrarchan imagery we have frequently referred to. And, having just been through Twelfth Night with students who saw Orsino the same way Gil sees Romeo and Juliet, I wonder how long these conventions will be a foil for his romantic plots.

I think there is a parallel to this use of established convention as foil for Shakespearean view in the history plays. When we read the Henry VI plays we talked a lot about the passing of the chivalric age, and reading 1 Henry IV this month with my students, the same observation has come up: Hotspur as old honor and chivalry; Hal as modern politician, not anti-chivalric, but not governed exclusively by an out-dated code. Food for thought as we go into the second tetralogy later this year.

And is there a similar trait in the tragedies? For example, is it the conventions of revenge tragedy that turn up revised and evolved in Hamlet?

I worried a year ago, privately, that we might get eight or ten plays in and run out of gas or lose interest. Today, I feel the opposite. I feel that each play and subsequent discussion has increased my desire to get the rest and to hear your thoughts, ideas, and reactions. If we stopped today, after ten plays, I would feel a sense of real accomplishment, but I would also be tremendously disappointed. I look forward to our group that much.

Randall

RE: Two Gentlemen of Verona - Rambling

Shakespeare-chuckers,

Gil asked, oh weeks ago, why the two women in Two Gentlemen of Verona are "vastly superior creatures to the two men?" I propose the following response and question.

First, I expect that what we mean by "superior" here is that they are more constant in their love (not like wavering Proteus), more balanced in their love (not like Petrarchan Valentine and Proteus), and more possessed of wit (the reverse of foolishness) with which to test the validity of their suitors' love.

Second, let's reach back to the previous comedies we've discussed. Perhaps the easiest parallel for our superior women/foolish men question is Love's Labor's Lost. In that play Shakespeare gave us four women vastly superior to the four men who pursue them (after giving up on their oath to avoid them). Gil noted in one of his posts that the men's oath "is artificial, pretentious, mannered, affected, self-deceptive. …Of course, it gives way immediately to necessity, but it takes four more acts for them to discover they must learn who they are …". I don't think Proteus and Valentine are on as much of a journey of self-discovery, but I do think that neither is, at the beginning of the play, completely whole. Proteus, most clearly, learns something by the end of the play. He has loved Julia, jilted Julia, and reclaimed Julia ("Bear witness, heaven, I have my wish forever."). Valentine's love, true from the get-go, must be proved, but he gets off lighter than Berowne et. al. His heroic acts and moral ascendancy, saving Sylvia from a would-be rapist, saving her father from aristocratic brigands, are the stuff of time-constrained TV drama, but both elevate him from sighing lover to serious man.

In Comedy of Errors, we have something slightly different. Adriana and Luciana are less the model women we find in Two Gentlemen of Verona's Sylvia and Julia, or Love's Labor's Lost's Princess and Rosaline, and perhaps a step closer to Kate and Bianca in Shrew. But I would argue that they are still superior to the two Antipholuses. The Ephesian Antipholus is a boor, both inconstant to his wife and prone to over-the-top fits of temper. (Ant: "And did not I in rage depart from thence?" Dro: "In verity you did. -- My bones bear witness.") The Syracusian Antipholus is our somewhat callow Petrarchan lover. When he falls for Luciana, he deifies her, comparing her to "a God," a mermaid, a Siren, all at once. Yet he is like Valentine in that his love cannot be accepted until he has proved himself. The difference between Two Gentlemen of Verona and Comedy of Errors is in the degree of farce, so that Valentine's own actions validate him while Antipholus is validated by the resolution of the farce plot.

[As an aside, I'd like to see a production of Two Gentlemen of Verona played as a full on farce, just to see where that would get us: the letter scenes, Lance and Crab, the rope ladder stuff, the aristocrat thieves, the whizz-bang five-for-a buck forgivenesses at the end. I think the success of a production of this play is not in the lines, but between them.]

I'm not sure what to do with Taming of the Shrew, which seems to me the most balanced comedy in terms of male/female foolishness. So, I'm going to leave it out at this time. Perhaps one of you will take it up in light of what follows. Why are the women of these other comedies superior? Could it be that Julia gives us the answer?

JULIA
It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,
Women to change their shapes than men their minds. (5.4.116-117)

Therefore men's inconstancy is the greater blot. And Shakespeare's comedies have provided us, so far, with men who are inconstant of mind. Berowne and friends cannot even keep their own oath. Nor Proteus. The Petrarchan lovers – Romeo, Orsino, Valentine, Antipholus, and our four lack-wits writing bad sonnets in Love's Labor's Lost – are inconstant in that they confuse the ideal of love with the object of love. To begin in Petrarchan mode as Romeo does with Rosaline is to love Love rather than the girl. Love itself, then, becomes the object with which the man is unfaithful to his "true" love. I need lines to support this, but it's what has been scratching at the back of my mind for a while.

Proteus follows Julia's comment, emphasizing this general failing on men's part:

O heaven, were man
But constant, he were perfect; that one error
Fills him with faults, makes him run though all th' sins;
Inconstancy falls off ere it begins. (5.4.118-123)

The comic male, then, is the inconstant male, the imperfect male -- in action, in love, in mind. And this imperfection is put in relief by women's comparable constancy. It would be interesting to read this feminine superiority and constancy (and wit) as Shakespeare-the-feminist. But I wonder if the women's ideal construction in his comedies suggests that they are, more, foils for the men's more dynamic journey and comic presentation? (That's my question.) Are these plays that focus most on the male experience? And if so, is the viewer presented with a comic mirror in order to see in the male reflection anything on a scale from didactic (look on these male fools and mend thy ways!) to pure entertainment (ha ha, she's got him writing a letter to himself!)? Yes, it should be said that comedy consistently provides us something of both, but we do not always take it that way. How many of us sit in front of reality TV and think "arguing like a dim-witted moron with my wife is counter-productive"? Alas, we more likely laugh, and point, and mumble through our mouthful of beer and Doritos: "whatta moron."

Stones. Glass houses. That's entertainment.

Randall

[Note A: I have not had room here to make my argument about women's superior wit. I will save that for another day.]

[Note B: The other half of Julia's comment defining women's "blot" is that they "change their shapes." This can be read as a basic shot against the dressing up women do, or to paraphrase Hamlet: God has given them one face, and they make themselves another. But I also like the reading that points to disguise, and here we find Rosalind (of As You Like It), Julia, Viola, Jessica. We are never expected to see these transformations as character flaw. In fact, they are a device by which the woman discovers truth. Interesting.]

RE2: Two Gentlemen of Verona - Just Say No

Very funny (even to someone for whom phallic matters are a rather sensitive issue at this point). All I can say is that it's good you never went to graduate school and/or to some of the talks I've attended. Just use Derrida's name five times in your sophomore-level presentation, and you're in – another item for your dossier and hope for advancement. Very clever.

Ernst

RE: Two Gentlemen of Verona - Just Say No

Just an aside,

In the Farrelly Brothers' There's Something About Mary – and I know after that opening phrase you're wondering how the heck we're gonna get to Shakespeare – Ben Stiller's character, Ted, takes the male portion of the audience through one of the greatest examples of "cringe humor." Moments from the beginning of a fantasy prom date with the eponymous Mary, young Ted uses the bathroom and gets his "frank and beans" caught in his zipper. Ouch.

I am reminded of this by Gil's citing of William H. Carroll's interpretation of the letter scene in Act 1, scene 2 of Two Gentlemen of Verona. It seems, the critic suggests, that we are to acquaint the letter with a penis. Now, I'm not a prude. And I'm not above recognizing a little phallic imagery in my literature. In Arthur Penn's film Bonnie and Clyde, Bonnie goes to town with Clyde after she meets him. The first time Cylde shows her that he has a gun, he removes it from his pants and holds it at crotch level, barrel out. Bonnie reaches out and caresses it. Very phallic. Yet I'm looking at the running gag with Proteus' love letter, and I don't see it. But let's take Mr. Carroll at his word for a sec, just for fun.

After the letter is introduced with a very unsexy "peruse this note, madam," Julia responds with the following lines. I will interpret as lecherously as possible in parenthesis.

JULIA
Line 43: "Now, by my modesty, a goodly broker!" (A "broker" here is someone, or something, that would act as a go-between, or would "go between" them, as Proteus's manhood would if the letter were a metaphor for, uh, "country matters," as Hamlet says. Or rather, it would go between Proteus and Julia's modesty, perhaps a euphemism for her sex. Thus, we can see her comment as a stage direction, instructing her as to where to hold the letter while she contemplates it – "by" her "modesty.")

Line 44: "Dare you presume to harbor wanton lines?" (Well, "wanton"; we can assume that Julia perceives a lewd intent on Proteus's part. Later we will learn that the letter harbors no such wantonness, but rather a lot of love-struck drivel. Therefore, it must be the letter itself that is lewd, or maybe he wrote it on paper shaped like a bull's pizzle.)

Line 45: "To whisper and conspire against my youth?" (I read this as more gossipy than lascivious, but we could interpret this to suggest that Proteus is asking for sex, if we associate youth with virginity – maybe he says he wants to make a woman of her, for example. And if the letter does suggest this, then the physical letter itself may be, if we, um, extend our metaphor, a representative of his member.

Lines 46-47: "Now trust me, 'tis an office of great worth / And you an officer fit for the place." (The "it" here of "'tis" refers, I think, to Julia's youth. But "it" as I know from working with male adolescents is one of the more flexible words in English when it comes to references to genitalia. This gives a whole new meaning to "honey, I'm going to the office!" Let's award Julia this double-entendre, and agree that because she is a virgin, hers is indeed of great worth. The "you" then becomes less Proteus and more a piece of Proteus -- and before you can yell "Hold thy piece!", Julia is suggesting he fit it into "it."

And to come full circle, if Proteus and Julia consummate their relationship in this way, he will have "broke 'er" hymen (line 43).

Alrighty. Have we adequately erected Mr. Carroll's metaphor? Good. Now letter = phallus. What happens to the letter next? Uh, Julia gives it to Lucetta. (Fit giant question mark over cartoon character's head now.) And Lucetta makes off with it. Julia wants it back. Lucetta returns, with the letter, drops it, and retrieves it. Methinks our phallus is becoming a bit bruised. In explanation of the "took up so gingerly" line that Gil quotes, I think if I found a penis lying on the ground, I'd pick it up gingerly too. Shades of John Wayne Bobbitt come to mind.

To return, here I envisioned a scene played rather farcically – Lucetta holding the letter over her head, Julia whacking her ("How now, minion!") and grabbing letter.

Having retrieved the desired "phallus," Julia proceeds to … rip it up. Ouch. Frank and beans! I pause to consider what it would be like to have the Farrelly Bros. direct Two Gentlemen of Verona. (Except Peter Farrelly already did, and called it Dumb & Dumber.) Of the letter at this point, I would point out two things. First, no more of Julia's language can really be taken lewdly, so the phallic imagery, uh, wilts. Second, none of the language Julia finds on the pieces of the letter indicate any wantonness at all.

To conclude, I think Carroll's phallic symbol relies on a heavy-breathing interpretation of just five lines, and fails him after that. If I were to even propose an interpretation along this line in my class, my students would almost certainly ask "Aren't we reading too much into this?" Maybe. Carroll's problem here is a simple one: his interpretation tiresomely suggests that he knows how Shakespeare intended the letter to be seen.

And as all good New Critics know, that's bad criticism. One must always avoid the intentional phallusy.

Feeling cocky,
Randall

Two Gentlemen of Verona - A Footnote Involving Damon and Pythias

This play, Damon and Pythias, is a rather wonderful thing. As I happen to own a copy, I re-read it. And I send it along both because it has some bearing on the friendship issue an d because it’s an informative piece of English-drama history.

1. Damon and Pythias was written 30 years before Two Gentlemen of Verona, telling a story that everyone knew in a style that was totally antiquated by Shakespeare’s time. Its main theme is the inspirational power of self-sacrificing friendship. There are no women in the play; there is no pastoral-romance in the play; the characters are simple, and the vast majority of the play’s lines are devoted to satire of (1) tyrants, (2) courtly intrigue, and (3) sycophants. I feel very little commonality between it and Shakespeare’s play.

2. The play was written for choirboys to put on for a private audience—in this case a collection of University students and courtiers. “Commoners” would not have seen it. There were many plays so written and performed, and I’m sure sophisticated, London-based players were aware of them and their plots, but companies like Shakespeare’s and Marlowe’s were, in a general way, writing plays for a different audience—one ranging from commoner-groundlings to drop-in courtiers and students—in outdoor theatres. The so-called "children’s companies" were no great threat to publicly-performing companies like The Lord Admiral’s Men or the Queen’s men or the Lord Chamberlain’s Men until the mid-nineties, when far more sophisticated writers like George Chapman and Ben Jonson began writing plays for them and the plays were put on inside warmer buildings (for a price). That situation created the “little eyasses” Hamlet cries out against.

3. Damon and Pythias was, Like most plays of its time, written (mostly) in “fourteeners,” 7-foot, roughly iambic lines: di-da, di da, di-da, di-da, di-da, di-da, di-da. These lines were often written in rhymed couplets. We are more familiar with this pattern than we might think. For, if you take two such lines and break each up into four stresses and then three stresses each, you have a ballad stanza:

Di-da, di-da, di-da, di-da (Alas, my love, you do me wrong)
Di-da, di-da, di-da; (To cast me off discourteously)
Di-da, di-da, di-da, di-da (For I have lov-ed you so long,)
Di-da, di-da, di-da. (Delighting in your company.)

You can imagine how ballad stanzas would have broken up the natural flow of speech or serious thought or, at best, made them sound absurd. Fortunately, not too many years before the writing of Damon and Pythias, a couple of members of Parliament wrote a serious play in iambic pentameter (The Tragedy of Gorboduc), and by the late eighties, thanks to Kyd and Marlowe, unrhymed iambic pentameter became the language of upper-grade popular plays. Boy! Was Shakespeare born at the right time, or what!

And example of two “fourteeners” from Damon and Pythias (the verse is so irregular that two t0ogether are hard to find):

“But now, whereas I have felt the king’s liberality,
As princely as it came, I will spend it as regally.”

Shakespeare makes fun of such old-fashioned play-speech in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (although it’s written out differently on the page:

“Asleep, my love? What dead, my dove? O Pyramus arise!
Speak, speak. Quite dumb? Dead, dead? A tomb must cover thy sweet eyes.”

4. Finally, I found myself amazed (I had forgotten) at how much satire it contained—either by making caricatures of court types or by bringing in characters who would give us brief lectures on court evils (mind you, the playwright carefully says that nothing here is directed at Elizabeth’s court. Here is the moderate counselor talking to the tyrant Dionysius:

“To put to death presently whom envious flattery accused
It seemeth of tyranny; and upon what fickle ground all tyrants do stand.
Athens and Lacedemon can teach you, if it be rightly scanned.”

This moderate counselor, whose name is Eubulus (which means moderation) is borrowed from the afore-mentioned Gorboduc, where his function is the same. The play also borrows one of my favorites, Grim the Collier (who already has his own play), a normally populist sort of grumpy guy who complains about how hard the lower classes have it, but who, in this play (put on for aristocrats) is maltreated by a couple of servants (see plot below). The play also contains lots of physical clownery, such as the business with Grim mentioned above and the beating up by Stephano of Carisoppus, the slimy sycophant. I am sure kids loved putting on such rough-and-tumble scenes.

Well, so much for one brief introductory lecture on the nature of mid-fifteenth-century English courtly drama.

PLOT SUMMARY:

Damon and Pythias
Richard Edwards (1564)
Domain: Literature.
Genre: Play, Tragi-Comedy.
Country: England, Britain, Europe.
Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London

This play is the first acknowledged tragi-comedy in English and was written by Richard Edwards for a court performance by the Children of the Chapel Royal at Christmas 1564-5. It would have been staged in the main hall of the palace and, in the tradition of the performance of classical drama, in front of “houses” made of timber frames covered in painted canvas (representing, in this case, the court of Dionysius and the town of Syracuse). Written in a mixture of irregular rhyming couplets, ballad metre, regular stanzaic poetry and both popular and serious song, it is an interesting attempt to use differing poetic forms to create both character (Prologue 14-26) and dramatic pace and structure.

Published in 1571 (reprinted 1582), it may have been used as a school text and was certainly well known in Oxford colleges until the middle of the seventeenth century. It makes extensive use of proverbs in both Latin and English but wears both its learning and its morality lightly. A professional production with an all-female cast was given a single performance at the Globe theatre in London, 10 September 1996.

The archetypal story of the friendship of Damon and Pythias (sometimes Phintias), both followers of the philosopher Pythagoras, is ubiquitous in classical literature. Edwards would have known it from both Cicero (De Officiis, 3.10.45 and Tusculan Disputations, 5.22) and from Sir Thomas Elyot, Book of the Governor, 1531 (2.11). The story concerns the power of friendship in the face of state tyranny, but the play also sets out to confirm the legitimacy of theatre. The ingenuous disclaimer “We talk of Dionysius' court, we mean no court but that” (Prologue 40) of course invited the audience to make comparison with the court of Elizabeth I.

The pleasure-seeking philosopher, Aristippus (like Dionysius, an historical figure), is in competition with the sycophant, Carisophus, but agrees to be friends with him for expediency's sake. Damon and Pythias arrive, dressed as mariners to indicate their sea-journey from Greece, and accompanied by their slave Stephano. Carisophus, who makes a living sequestering the wealth of those he arrests on trumped-up charges, determines to entrap them. Stephano is instantly suspicious of the atmosphere of fear in the town and warns his masters, but Damon ignores him. Carisophus arrests Damon for taking more than a tourist's interest in the fortification of the city and Dionysius sentences him to summary execution. Pythias sings a heart-broken lament in anticipation of his friend's death. He approaches Aristippus, who is sympathetic but too frightened to intercede for him. The King's minister Eubulus (whose name literally means “good advice”) bravely urges clemency, “A cruel king the people hateth”, but Dionysius is determined: “Let them hate me so they fear me” (Scene 10, 169-70). Damon asks to be allowed time to return to Greece to settle his affairs. Dionysius gives him two months, provided he can leave a substitute in his place, but thinks that no-one would be so foolish as to agree. Pythias, however, offers himself. Damon departs and Pythias is taken to prison by the gruesomely comic hangman, Groano. Stephano surprises Carisophus ransacking Damon's lodgings and beats him up.

Scene 13, the longest in the play but only tangentially connected to the main storyline, shows the boisterous playground friendship of Aristippus's and Carisophus's pages, Will and Jack. They waylay Grim the collier (an adult part, probably played by Edwards himself) and get him drunk. He makes a good living supplying charcoal to the royal kitchens and asks if it is true that Dionysius gets his own daughters to shave him. Grim fancies being polled (shaved) by beautiful young women. Jack pretends he will give him a similar luxurious experience, but while doing this, polls (steals) his purse.

Carisophus, who has fallen out of favour at court, calls on his friend Aristippus to come to his aid. Aristippus refuses on the grounds that true friendship only exists where people love each other “not for profit but for virtue” (Scene 14.42). The day fixed for Pythias's execution arrives. Eubulus's controlled poetry in the face of tragedy causes the Muses themselves to be revealed singing a lament. Pythias, however, is overjoyed at the thought of his sacrifice for friendship's sake. At the last moment, Damon returns. The two friends now argue as to which them should die. Dionysius is overwhelmed and asks them to admit him into friendship with both of them. Stephano is freed and Carisophus beaten out of the court. The play ends with a song, wishing such faithful friends for Queen Elizabeth.

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Just Say No

Coalition of the Will-ings,

I remember a lyric from some old musical: “A boy chases a girl, until she catches him.”

Ernst wondered what the play has to say about love, and Randall expressed frustration with Julia’s pursuit of Proteus, but there is a curious sidebar to this, “courtship” and coyness in The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Act I scene 2: The play has opened with Proteus’s declaration of love for Julia, which outweighs his friendship for Valentine and the possibilities of educational benefits from travel. His apostrophe:

“Thou, Julia, thou hast metamorphis’d me,
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” (I.i.66-69)

appears to establish the primacy of love, an overwhelming – and debilitating – emotion. Its power metamorphoses, and here love itself is described, and this declaration does not seem particular to Proteus despite his shape-shifting name. Speed will use the same image to describe Valentine, once he is smitten with Sylvia: “now you are metamorphis’d with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you are my master” (II.i.30-32).

Soon after Proteus’s declaration, we meet this beloved Julia who confers with her companion, Lucetta. “But say, Lucetta, now we are alone,/ Woulds’t thou then counsel me to fall in love?” “Ay, madam, so you stumble not unheedfully?” Among a catalogue of suitors, Lucetta endorses Proteus, her reason for preferring him is merely “I have no other but a woman’s reason:/ I think him so, because I think him so.” So both Proteus and Lucetta acknowledge love is irrational, though Lucetta seems to add that woman is the weaker vessel. Lucetta delivers a letter from Proteus, which Julia, modestly (?), refuses. Alone, Julia regrets such girlish decorum. She wishes she had looked over the letter—no, it were shame to call Lucetta back—yet Lucetta is a fool not to force the letter on her, “knowing I am a maid,” since virgins, “in modesty, [must] say ‘no’ to that/ Which they would have the profferer construe ‘ay’” (I.ii.55-56). Thus, dissembling rejection of love is a code of virginal behavior, in which no, of course, means yes (a whole 20th century fire-storm about date rape is herein created), and there follows much business with Proteus’s letter—it is dropped, stooped for, left lie, picked up, torn up without being read, the scraps thrown down, until, alone, Julia collects and kisses the scraps and tries to reconstruct the text from the shredded fragments.

I’ve seen a reference to a production in which the letter is comically duct-taped together. Well, OK, but William C. Carroll, editor of the New Arden, really loses it commenting on this scene, noting “The letter is an eroticized symbol for Proteus’s phallus throughout this scene: it is ‘took up so gingerly,’ and Julia complains that Lucetta is ‘fingering’ the letter’s pieces.”(Arden Two Gentlemen of Verona, 155). All I want from this scene is that love for a maid, and a woman, is a matter to be coyly resisted. Julia is alone when she weighs her desire to accept against the decorum of resistance.

In Romeo and Juliet, Juliet, on her balcony, confesses her passion for Romeo when she thinks she is alone, but when he is discovered eavesdropping, she offers to pretend to be similarly coy, so he will think she practices socially acceptable feminine coquetry rather than honest passion. Anyway, what I get from this scene, following Proteus’s frank description of love, is a female side, where decorum, modesty, and uncertainty interfere. Of course, this dissolves by the time the letter is reassembled, Julia replies, and she and Proteus are pledged to each other forever. Love triumphs everlastingly (heh, heh).

There also is male commentary on female coyness. In Act 3, scene 1, the Duke, deciding to remarry in order to disinherit the disobedient Sylvia, asks Valentine for dating advice, how he might court a lady in Milano, though she be “nice and coy.” (Remember the Duke is also trying to entrap Valentine to uncover his duplicity in eloping with Sylvia.) Valentine says diamonds are a gal’s best friend.

“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
…
A woman sometime scorns what best contents her.
[if she rejects a gift] 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
…
Take no repulse, what ever she doth say;
For ‘get you gone,’ she doeth not mean ‘away!” (III.i.89…101)

Here’s more stuff about “no’ means ‘yes’: “a woman sometime scorns what best contents her” (93). Though more crass, Valentine’s analysis of a mature woman’s coquetry describes what becomes of Julia’s initial no-means-yes confession.

Lastly, Launce speaks of his own love for a milkmaid, and he has written a list of her qualities and her faults. Launce and Speed analyze the document: she can fetch and carry; she can milk; she can wash and scour. Speed adds, as a fault, that she is slow in words, but Launce rebuts “O villain, that set this down among her vices! To be slow in words is a woman’s only virtue” (III.i.334). At the production I saw in Boulder, the audience audibly grumbled at this. Launce strode to the edge of the stage, out of character, and said “Don’t blame me. I didn’t write this stuff.” And that, friends, other than Crab, is what I remember from The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

This detour on the behaviors of women ends with its opposite—Proteus, now smitten with Sylvia, notes that he is repaid for his betrayal of Valentine, his breaking of faith with Julia, even his injustice toward the unsympathetic Thurio, “yet, spaniel-like, the more she spurns my love/ The more it grows, and fawneth on her still” (IV.ii.14).

I’m afraid this is only a little parlor piece, and does not yet address Ernst’s provocative hypothesis. I hope to try to say something about it still, and I fear, Ernst may be convincing me that Two Gentlemen of Verona is really far more interesting than I have allowed myself to accept, except, of course, for Act 5, scene 4, which I still believe Shakespeare wrote on opening day, thrusting the lines into the actors’ hands after they had already begun the first performance.

Gil

RE: Two Gentlemen of Verona - An Hypothesis

Ladies and gentlemen,

With under a week to go in our Two Gentlemen of Verona discussion, I see Ernst already has his final thoughts in my mailbox, while I'm still thinking about answers to the eight interesting questions he posed previously. I feel like I've been standing in front of the menu at Manny's Tortas, trying to figure out if I want a #2 or a #5, but the line is building up behind me, so it's time to order.

Ernst asks: "What does the play SAY about love?" I hope my starting here indicates that I agree with the basic premise that the play is more about love than friendship, and that's because I'm still miffed that the gross betrayal of one's friend, no matter how shallow he may be, is a serious matter, one not easily set straight by an "I'm sorry."/"Hey. No problem." Such a betrayal has real consequences, and Two Gentlemen of Verona is not concerned with Proteus and Valentine's friendship after the first act.

There are also serious consequences to betrayal in love, but as we see in Shakespeare elsewhere being in love means never having to say you're sorry. Romeo bumps off Juliet's favorite cousin and gets himself banished from Verona (and her) hours after their marriage; she gets over it.

Before he realizes that his servant is really a woman masquerading as a young man, Orsino is ready to hate Viola/Cesario, calls her "dissembling cub," banishes her from his presence. In addition, his "thoughts are ripe in mischief" against Olivia, who he knows loves Cesario. Sebastian turns up, and everything is made right. Never mind that Olivia thought she was marrying Cesario (and his beautiful, feminine language), not a twin brother, or that Orsino had pursued Olivia for four-and-a-half acts and was intensely distressed at her love for Cesario. Her love for Sebastian, on the other hand, he lets slide. Nor is he that concerned that his close confidant has duped him. Rather he sees the twins, realizes Cesario is a woman and says to himself, somewhat abruptly, "I shall have share in this most happy wrack." My students roll their eyes.

Then there's Claudio and Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. He, fooled into believing she has been unfaithful, cruelly abandons her in the church on their wedding day. Yes, there is a test before he can get her back, but she never questions his lack of faith in her in the first place.

My point is Shakespeare's lovers throw rationality to the wind when it gets to Act 5 (or Act 3 in Romeo and Juliet's case). Love is after all a product of the heart and not the mind. But what kind of heart? Can we characterize it?

The Duke, Sylvia's father, tells Valentine that "love is like a child / That longs for everything that he can come by" (3.1.124-125). I find this infantilization of love interesting. I don't think this refers to Cupid, the "blind bow-boy," who seems more Puckish than child-like in Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labor's Lost. Considering that this comment comes from the Duke, who has been told of Valentine's plan to steal his daughter, we can hear a certain remonstration in the comment. Love longs for anything, even if it is inappropriate. It is undisciplined. It is at once appetite-driven and immature. Does this reflect what we see in Two Gentlemen of Verona? Sure. Valentine does not have Sylvia's father's blessing, so he simply attempts a heist, a transgression, an act that is ignorant of self-denial or propriety. And Proteus, once he's out of sight of Julia whose love he has, sees Sylvia and wants her, an inconstancy worthy of Aesop's dog who sees his reflection in the water and drops the bone in his mouth in order to grab the new one.

(I really like Ernst's reading that suggests Proteus's pursuit of Sylvia has more to do with irritation with Valentine, but his soliloquy in 2.6 suggests that his desire is real.)

But let's not just take the Duke's word for it. In Act 1, scene 2, Julia rejects a letter from Proteus, asking her maid to return it to him. Immediately she wants it back, but her pride makes it difficult to ask. She chides herself,

"Fie, fie, how wayward is this foolish love
That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse
And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod!" (1.2.60-62)

It doesn't surprise me that Julia's image of the child love is more maternal than the Duke's, but hers echoes the spontaneous yet fickle nature that both images imply. As a parent, I know how demanding, at times tyrannical, children can be. I wonder if Shakespeare's use of this simile impugns love as much as it seems to. In both cases, an opposition is set up – the willful child love against the weary adult world. This adult world may exist beyond the lover; that is, it is not Valentine or Julia in either case who represent the mature world. Rather, they are forced by love to act in a way that runs against civilized behavior.

Thus, what Two Gentlemen of Verona tells us about love is that it drives us to do foolish things (a theme played more deftly in Twelfth Night) because it turns a natural order – parents ruling children – around. All the lovers in the play reject, at some point, the natural order. They disrespect their elders, or betray their friends, or put their future at risk, or disguise themselves rather than reveal themselves, or act unnaturally, or ignore shameful behaviors. In Twelfth Night, love makes alazons of us all. In Two Gentlemen of Verona, love makes harried, irrational parents of us all, deriding others who fail to discipline their unruly children while plying our own screaming kids with candy. Love, thy name is Baby Snooks.

Pacified,
Randall

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Final Words

In his short monograph, Shakespeare and Forgiveness, our friend Bill Matchett writes of Two Gentlemen of Verona:

“Forgiveness [the general subject of his essay] first becomes central to the plot with Two Gentlemen. As a convenient device for letting comedy end happily, pardon can be handled briefly; forgiveness, which necessarily involves problems of character, cannot. In Two Gentlemen, in his attempt to handle character change as briefly as he handled pardon, Shakespeare fell on his face. There is much to be said of this delightful play in other contexts, but its hasty ending is a disaster involving far-fetched ingenuity from directors attempting to save or make sense of it.

“The plot is built on the traditional conflict between the claims of love and those of friendship, with the medieval assumption that male friendship’s claims transcend those of heterosexual love. Friendship is noble; love is tinged with ignoble lust. In deciding to woo Sylvia, his friend Valentine’s beloved, Proteus is perfectly aware of his own guilt:

To leave my Julia shall I be forsworn;
To love fair Sylvia shall I be forsworn;
To wrong my friend I shall be much forsworn . . . . (II.vi.1-3)

"The additional emphasis of the move from 'shall I be' to 'I shall be much' shows his acceptance of the priorities, and Proteus arrives at his worst heresy when he decides 'I to myself am dearer than a friend' (23).

“These assumptions are emphasized again in Sylvia’s protest when Proteus is pursuing her. It is not his disrespect to her that she finds worth mentioning, but rather:

SYLVIA
Thou counterfeit to thy true friend!
PROTEUS
Who respects friend?
SYLVIA
All men but Proteus. (V.iii.53-54)

"From here, the scene proceeds to attempted rape:

[Matchett here quotes lines 55-72]

"This is bad enough, with its mixed metaphor of the hand’s bosom and Valentine’s 'I am sorry, I must never trust thee more' sounding like Aunt Polly who has caught Tom Sawyer with his hand in the cookie-jar, but worse is to follow:

PROTEUS
My shame and guilt confounds me.
Forgive me, Valentine. If hearty sorrow
Be a sufficient ransom for offense,
I tender it here; I do as truly suffer
As e’er I did commit.
VALENTINE
Then I am paid;
And once again I do receive thee honest.
Who by repentance is not satisfied
Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased.
By penitence th’Eternal’s wrath’s appeased;
And, that my love may appear plain and free,
All that was mine in Sylvia I give thee. (73-83)

"What Shakespeare gives us here is the outline of forgiveness: without flesh, it is ridiculous. It is not just that poor Sylvia has not been consulted nor her forgiveness asked—that 'O heaven!' (a challenge for any actress) turns out to be her final line in the play. Concern for Sylvia is a modern objection to the whole male-dominated love-and-friendship archetype. The major problem is that, even within the assumptions of the pattern, we can trust neither Proteus’ conversion nor Valentine’s forgiveness when they are presented so schematically. Both repentance and forgiveness demand more scope if they are to carry conviction.”

After this, Matchett goes on to discuss Romeo and Juliet as a much improved (if still imperfect) example of putting some meat on the bones of (at least) repentance.

Of course, Matchett is building an argument regarding Shakespeare’s growth regarding these themes over the course of his entire career and, I would suggest, focusing less on the central essence of Two Gentlemen of Verona, which is the question WE are facing.

[Note: one of the earlier forms of this story appears in Boccaccio’s Decameron (Tenth Day, Eighth Story), which which is summarized:

“Sophronia, believing herself married to Gisippus, discovers she is the wife of Titus Quintus Fulvus, and goes with him to Rome where Gisippus later arrives in dire poverty. He is under the impression Titus has scorned him, and accuses himself of having murdered a man, so that he may be put to death. Titus recognizes him, and to save his friend [italics mine], takes the guilt upon himself. The true murderer, however, on beholding Titus’ noble action, gives himself up, whereupon they are all set free by Octavianus. Later, Titus gives his sister in marriage to Gisippus, and shares all his goods with him.” ("Hey, Sis; I got a good friend here …”)]

I have wondered from the start just what the “central essence” of Two Gentlemen of Verona is. And it certainly seems to me that, even though the play touches on friendship and forgiveness, the two are really minor themes. Rather, as I have suggested before, the play is much more easily seen as a kind of pastoral romance (albeit a clumsy one). It is about people who leave a civilized place, travel to a different, quasi-pastoral place, are changed, and come home (well, Proteus comes home, anyway). I note, by the way, that a likely antecedent for this play is the Queen’s Men’s Felix and Felismena (ca.1585) and, to a lesser extent, its source, a Portuguese pastoral romance called “Felix and Felismena” from Jorge de Montemayor’s Diana Enamorada, published in 1542.

I will note that, in this source, the titular (and central) characters are the equivalents of Julia and Proteus in Two Gentlemen of Verona, and not the two men involved. Of course, there was also a tragic-comic play by the English poet Richard Edwards twenty years earlier than Felix and Felismena (1564): Damon and Pythias. This play may have influenced Shakespeare and suggested naming the play after the men involved, but, in the early '90s, pastoral romances (Greene, etc.) were more in vogue, and Felix and Felismena was still a relatively fresh memory.

So I am searching for a reading that will lead to a more satisfying production of the play, and I am wondering whether it might not make for a better whole if we saw it more as a pastoral romance than as an attempted essay into the archetypes of friendship and forgiveness. When, for example, I look for the more interesting issues in the play, I, like Matchett, see both friendship and forgiveness as being rather shallowly handled. What do we learn? That friendships break up when a woman is involved, that forgiveness is a good thing. Ho-hum. The issues I find more interesting are: (1) The ways both Valentine and Proteus contribute to their friendship’s downfall; (2) the difference between the more down-to-earth/slightly-skeptical Proteus and the romantic Valentine in both the this-worldly Verona and the other-worldly Milan; (3) the delightful wit, beauty and grace of Julia and Sylvia, and (4) the place in Shakespeare’s development of comic characters of the play’s “clowns.” (Still a topic for investigation, I think.)

Yes, we are left with Proteus’ crass behavior in Milan. The only way I can see this treated theatrically is to consider the notion that he, like others in similar romances, is under some sort of deranging spell once he is forced by his father to forsake his fiancée and travel off to the magical land of Milan (no Fiat factories there yet—although it was, in fact, considerably larger—120 thousand in 1600—than Verona). The romantic Valentine is not similarly affected, but then, romantic that he is, he is already predisposed to existence in a magical world populated by grim dukes, a beautiful maiden, and bands of aristocratic robbers.

All of which brings me to an imagined production (caution: I have directed only children’s plays and served as a dramaturge for a few others.) In this production, I could imagine "Verona" on a movable stage, which would start downstage right. I would put Milan and its woods (not yet destroyed to produce fuel for iron-smelting) downstage left at a somewhat lower level than Verona. I would put some sort of "water" between the two and emphasize the voyage from one place to another—perhaps by using a small boat/ship drawn from place to place by one of the clowns. After Valentine and Proteus go off to Milan, I would perhaps pull “Verona” upstage some, but not so far that we fail to remain aware of its being the home base of the story and (for a while) the platform from which Julia considers what is happening out there in the wider world. I would hope a clever director could find a clear way of showing Proteus as “touched” or under some sort of spell once he travels to Milan—through lighting, perhaps.

Anyhow, that’s as far as I can see into my glass ball. But the basic idea is there: make it a pastoral romance, with all its fun and charm, and avoid trying to wrench it into a study of either forgiveness or manly friendship. It is neither of these.

Gilbert?

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Water Conceit

Mike,

We have another water conceit for you, to go into your drop in the ocean collection from Comedy of Errors. The speakers are Julia and her maid Lucetta:

LUCETTA:
I do not seek to quench your love’s hot fire,
But qualify the fire’s extreme rage,
Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason.

JULIA:
The more thou dam’st it up, the more it burns:
The current that with gentle murmur glides,
Thou know’st, being stopp’d, impatiently doth rage;
But when his fair course is not hindered,
He makes sweet music with th’ enamell’d stones,
Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge
He overtaketh in his pilgrimage;
And so by many winding nooks he strays
With willing sport to the wild ocean.
Then let me go, and hinder not my course:
I’ll be as patient as a gentle stream,
And make a pastime of each weary step,
Till the last step have brought me to my love
And there I’ll rest, as after much turmoil
A blessed soul doth in Elysium. (II.vii.21-38)

Gil

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Rambling

Labourers,

I don’t have much affinity with The Two Gentlemen from Verona. I finished it by the discussion start date, but I have not focused any sort of ideas about it. I have had tickets for three productions. Pretty much all I remember from the first two is Crab, once a well-wrangled mutt and the other time a metal dog sculpture on wheels, guided by a stiff leash. There was one memorable Launce moment that I will save for later. Before the third production, open air at Ashland, Oregon, they raised the flag and blew the trumpet, followed by a torrential downpour canceling the performance, a rare occurrence at Ashland. (We once saw Richard II in Ashland and, in the fifth act, with Richard’s body laid out on a bier, falling rain filled his eye sockets. The dead Richard never twitched a muscle. What an actor!)

I’ll pass on some of my running notes, then, I promise, I’ll address Randall’s opening prompts and Ernst’s two redeeming posts. I realize a couple of the following repeat some of Ernst’s observations.

The play opens with the debate between “home-keeping youth” and travel to see the “wonders of the world abroad.” Can we engage a theory of education? Did Shakespeare’s age already have the Grand Tour, happ’ly to see some rare noteworthy object in one’s travels, which I associate with the 19th century, and even then I think of it as affluent young Englishmen traveling to Italy not as much to see magnificent culture as to see color and art in good light. In Shrew, Lucentio “Pisa left/ And am to Padua come, as he that leaves/ A shallow plash to plunge him in the deep” (Taming of the Shrew, I.i.21-23), theoretically to study, but as his servant Tranio points out, there are other broadening values in such travel, “No profit grows where is no pleasure ta’en.” (Taming of the Shrew, I.i.30).

And of course, as with Valentine and later Proteus, “broadening” alludes to the second definition in the South Pacific lyric: “And she was broad where a broad should be broad.” Also traveling to Padua (happiness is Verona in the rear view mirror? doesn’t anyone except Juliet stay in Verona?) is Petruchio. Horatio asks “what happy gale/ Blows you to Padua here from old Verona? and Petruchio replies “Such wind as scatters young men through the world/ To seek their fortunes farther than at home,/ Where small experience grows” (Taming of the Shrew, I ii. 48-52) and only later does he add his intent “to wive it wealthily.” Of course, the withdrawal into cloistered study in Loves Labor’s Lost is the antithesis, but remember this academic aestheticism only lasts for the blink of an eye. Proteus is, of course, staying at home for the love of Julia, while the case for travel is overwhelming: “home-keeping youth have ever homely wits,” or “living dully sluggardiz’e at home/ Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness” (Two Gentlemen of Verona, I.i.1, 7-8).

Proteus’s father Antonio hears the same education argument from his servant Panthino (hands up, all who remember Panthino) who reports that Antonio’s brother “wond’red that you lordship/ Would suffer [Proteus] to spend his youth at home,/ …let him spend his time no more at home,/ Which would be great impeachment to his age,/ In having known no travel in his youth.” (I.iii.4-5, 14-16), to which Antonio articulates the moral of the education argument: “He cannot be a perfect man,/Not being tried and tutor’d in the world;/ Experience is by industry achiev’d,/ And perfected by the swift course of time” (I.iii.20-23). Proteus then lies about a letter from Julia which he claims is from Valentine, importuning him to join at Mantua, so Proteus is hoist on his own petard, as someone once said.

OK, so this is more plot device to get the boys out of town, but there is a certain irony that such an attractive case is made for the enrichment of travel, yet both young gentlemen are ensnared in lies, betrayal, deceit, and piteous erosion of character by journeying into the unfamiliar. I might have liked him better had Proteus sluggardized at home. Me? I traveled so muc h as a youth, I thought travel was “home.” No wonder I turned out to be a slug.

As we come back to Two Gentlemen of Verona from Romeo and Juliet, one notices starts of scenes or issues from later plays. Take, for instance, Petrarchan conventions. In the first scene Valentine twits Proteus about swearing on some shallow story of deep love such as Leander crossing the Hellespont, and I thought of how deliciously and maliciously Mercutio ridicules Romeo’s undying live for Rosaline. And in II.i, Speed similarly mocks Valentine’s inane behaviors of romantic love, cataloging wreathing of arms, relishing love songs, sighing, weeping, being metamorphos’d into a puling lover, reminding me of Mercutio again, cynical and antiromantic, conjuring up Romeo with sighs and trite rhymes, not to mention Rosaline’s bright eyes and quivering thighs. Romeo and Proteus abandon their eternal loves with similar alacrity.

Sylvia has the perfect foil for an addled Petrarchan lover. She commands Valentine to ghostwrite a love letter for her addressed to an anonymous lover. Surely Valentine must temper the excesses of Petrarchan hyperbole, especially in that he loves Sylvia himself. When he composes it to her, she signs it and gives it back to Valentine, occasion for Speed’s “O jest unseen, inscrutable, invisible” (II.i.135), my favorite bit in this play, a great woman’s jest, perfectly addressing the potential for Valentine’s decayed Petrarchanism.

Meanwhile, Julia has made a journey, disguised in breeches, to follow Proteus to Milan, “a true-devoted pilgrim is not weary/ To measure kingdoms with his feeble steps;/ Much less shall she that hath Love’s wing’s to fly,/And when the flight is made to one so dear,/ Of such divine perfection, as Sir Proteus” (II.vii.9-13). Romeo and Juliet’s sonnet on the dance floor will also use the pilgrim image, but I don’t see Julia’s conventions of romantic love in this scene quite as excessive as Romeo mooning over Rosaline. Thus, I think by Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare is more sure-handed in his parody and put-down of the conventions of romantic love, freeing him to create the soaring lyricism of Juliet’s “The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse” and “Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds” and Romeo’s “Heaven is here/ Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dog/ And little mouse, every unworthy thing,/ Live here in heaven” or the classical aubade, “Wilt thou be gone? It is not yet near day./ It was the nightingale and not the lark,/ That pierc’d the fearful hollow of thine ear.”

Earlier, Julia and Lucetta review a list of suitors, just as Portia and Nerissa do at Belmont, but without the cutting energy of the later play. Proteus and Julia exchange rings and seal the bargain with a holy kiss in II.ii, a troth as binding as Romeo and Juliet in Friar Lawrence’s cell. In Romeo and Juliet this exchange could be the moment of tragedy (though I opt for a different point) and creates the crushing dramatic irony when Juliet’s Nurse advises bigamy (who would know?). But in Two Gentlemen of Verona, Proteus just kisses the spousal pledges off, no tragedy, but not very comic either.

When Proteus rats out his great friend Valentine’s plot to elope with Sylvia to her father, the Duke’s rage, “she is peevish, sullen, forward,/ Proud, disobedient, stubborn, lacking duty,/ Neither regarding that she is my child,/ Nor fearing me as if I we hr father,” is worthy of Baptista’s “affection” for his daughter Kate in Shrew. The Duke then vows vengeance on his daughter’s disaffection: “And may I say to thee, this pride of hers/ (Upon advice) hath drawn my love from her, / And where I thought the remnant of mine age/ Should have been cherish’d by her child-like duty…” foreshadows Lear’s initial response to Cordelia’ refusal to indulge his ego. The Duke rages on, “I now am full resolv’d to take a wife,/ And turn her out to who will take her in:/ Then let her beauty be her wedding-dow’r” and locks his daughter in a tower. More Rapunzel than Romeo and Juliet’s balcony scene, though a rope ladder is introduced. Here we have Capulet’s rage. Tragedy should follow, but instead Sylvia escapes into the woods until all is forgiven.

Before that happens, Valentine is banished. “And why not death, rather than living torment?/ To die is to be banish’d from my self/ And Sylvia is myself,: banish’d from myself,/ Is self from self, a deadly banishment.” Romeo again, but we also had this from Suffolk in 2 Henry VI, torn from his illicit affair with Queen Margaret (“If I depart from thee, I cannot live,/ And in thy sight to die, what were it else/ But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?” 2 Henry VI, III.ii.388-90). Suffolk’s banishment is cut short [sic] when he is beheaded by pirates, whereas Valentine merely goes off to the green world to become King of the Outlaws, because he alleges he is a killer, he has a nice bod, and he is polylingual (one never knows when a little Portuguese or Swahili might come in handy among a band of outlaws; want to guess which I think is the silliest scene in Shakespeare?

Proteus sends Julia/Sebastian as messenger to Sylvia, a prefigue of Orsino sending Viola/Cesario to Olivia, but Two Gents fails to develop any of the multi-dimensional irony and passion of Twelfth Night. And lastly there is business with pledged rings, similar, but underdeveloped, to Merchant of Venice. But enough (too much?). I’ll be back on coy courtship and direct discussion of Ernst’s last post. Any takers on language? And why the two women are vastly superior creatures to the two men?

Gil

Two Gentlemen of Verona - An Hypothesis

A Reading of Two Gentlemen of Verona:

Let us say that Two Gentlemen is a play within a play. The “outer” and richer play is the story of the love between Julia and Proteus. Julia, a delightful character, shows wit, sympathy, tractability, and grace. Proteus is not unattractive himself, being very humble in courting Julia and showing himself as a reflective character who balances skepticism and romantic idealism. At the end of the first act, they declare their love for one another, trade tokens of affection, and kiss.

But of course, Proteus must be tested and, much like Othello and Orlando, etc., must move off to a pastoral “other world” to probe his mettle to some depth. In this other world, he fails miserably, although understandably. He is alone in another country; Valentine oppresses him with his over-the-top love-talk, and awkward circumstances drive him to fall for the reigning beauty of Milan, a “falling off” he laments but seems unable to repair. We have all been there, I suppose—at least I have.

What Proteus needs, of course, is Julia, who travels to the island herself, assesses and involves herself (in male disguise, natch) in recovering Proteus to his former self and, along the way, giving Sylvia helpful sympathy and helping clear the way for the Sylvia-Valentine match to go forward.

Then, at this play’s end, Proteus is redeemed and forgiven through Julia’s grace, the disguised are revealed, and we look forward to a couple of marriages.

The “inner” and less rich play involves the romantic Valentine, who sails off to his own personal “Belmont,” where he courts Sylvia (who is, however, no PORTIA, but, rather, the play’s secondary love-interest). Valentine also is beset by problems involving a rival (dullard of a) suitor, a jealous father, and a duplicitous friend who reveals his (dangerous/foolish) plan to carry Sylvia down his rope ladder and off to who knows where.

However, once again, Grace, in the form of Julia, arrives along with a gang of fantastical aristocratic bandits, and the competitor for Sylvia’ hand is revealed as a shallow fool. All works out; Proteus repents, the Duke ceases his opposition to Valentine, and, again, we look forward to a couple of marriages.

One of the things that threw me about the play at first reading was that Sylvia, the beauty queen of Milan, was NOT the center of the play, but, merely, a secondary character. Shakespeare, who may have anticipated my confusion, drives this home in the clever painting scene (4.4), where Julia looks carefully at both Sylvia-in-the-flesh and Sylvia-in-the-painting and deduces (I see no reason to doubt her evaluation) that the painter prettied up the portrait, and that Sylvia is, indeed, less beautiful than she (auburn hair is inferior to blond hair; short stature is inferior to tall [Elizabethan] stature, etc.). As I suggest above, the set-up in The Merchant of Venice, to which we are more used, is different.

So there’s a reading to run up the flagpole. And for those of you who don’t have time, consider starting with my reading and:

1. Saying whether or not it makes sense or, at least, clarifies the way the play goes.

2. Saying whether you think the play is about friendship (its generally accepted theme) or (as I would suggest) about love.

3. Which of the two male lovers is the more believable, realistic?

4. Which of the two “comedians” (Flash and Launce) is funnier? How are these two characters similar and/or dissimilar? Who are their descendants in later plays you know?

5. What does the play have to SAY about love?

6. What does it have to SAY about friendship?

7. Which character grows/changes the most?

8. How would you stage the play to keep the audience from seeing it as an inferior mish-mash?It’s amazing how losing a prostate sharpens (or dulls?) one’s mind.

Ernst

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Some Early Thoughts

Ladies and Gentlepods,

What follows is a bit of a random collection of semi-organized thoughts,which may or may not help forward our discussion.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona, often dated earlier in the order of Shakespeare’s plays and sometimes referred to as Shakespeare’s “worst play,” strikes me as a very simple re-telling of a story Shakespeare’s audience must have known (The History of Felix and Philiomena, acted 3 January, 1585). It feels very much to me as if Shakespeare was experimenting in some ways and embellishing his tale less for increased character or thematic depth than for a shallowly literate audience, possibly the Court and certainly the law Students who seemed attracted to the Bard from the earliest days.

None of the characters really gains much of our sympathy. Sure, the women are by far the most interesting characters and have to put up with the various male stupidities of the men who surround them, but there’s not much new there—except to see that Julia, not Sylvia would appear to be the favored, quasi-Elizabeth tall blond (Helena, etc.), while the famous Sylvia turns out to be short and dark (Hermia, etc.), which may simply show the power the “Who is Sylvia?” song (and Schubert’s breathlessly beautiful setting thereof) have had on our collective imagination. (In the play, Sylvia scorns the song much as she scorns Proteus and Thurio, who have set her up to hear it.)

Of course, Proteus is the stinker here, but when you think of a couple of the ways he is treated, his behavior seems more “after the convention” than anything we should worry about. First, he is in the process of falling in love with Julia, when his father yanks him away from home and sends him off to Milan to join Valentine. Then there is the really quite uncomfortable interchange between the two young men, when Valentine runs Proteus over the coals by comparing their two sweethearts and slamming Proteus for Julia’s inferiority to Sylvia (2.4.126-82—just try reading aloud line 180 and stressing the “my” in the phrase “my happiness,” and you’ll get a sense of Valentine’s shallowness). Proteus enters this scene as a skeptic and accuses Valentine of “braggardism,” but it is too late and his annoyance at Valentine’s shallowness may well be a factor in his falling for Sylvia. This, and the love-at-first-sight conventions somewhat mitigate Proteus’ failures in my eyes. Proteus’ soliloquy in 2.6 has some greater depth to it—at least as a study of one man’s thinking of all the reasons not to do something in order that he may do it (Macbeth).

After listening to the play, as I did, I decided that the ever-weeping clown (probably played by Will Kemp) was not a very good idea. There is only so much humor that can be got out of maudlin weeping-humor, and I’m glad Shakespeare never took this route again.

Small Notes: Like other early plays, this one raises the question of exactly how a well-to-do young man gets “finished”—stay at home, learn courtly ways at another court, become the leader of a desperate band of former “gentlemen” (a trick Gilbert and Sullivan used quite often)?

2.1.18—Here is an early (and good) Shakespearean description of the voguish “malcontent” (“malcontents” being the subject of my dissertation). Thus, one could argue, Proteus is a very early precursor of Hamlet.

2.1.91ff. It’s hard not to like Sylvia (and Julia), when one sees her practical skepticism and witty repartee. I think a careful comparison of the two women may be one of this play’s most productive reader-activities.

2.5.43—Jews get dumped on at least three times in this play; it’s uncomfortable.

One of my sources lists some of the similarities between this play and others:

1) Valentine's attempt at rescuing Silvia from her controlling father, and his subsequent banishment, is distantly reminiscent of what happens to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.

2) Shakespeare returned to the subject of close friends fighting over a woman at the very end of his career, in The Two Noble Kinsmen.

3) Valentine's and Silvia's plan to elope in the night and their interactions with Proteus and Julia in the forest, are reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

4) This could very well be the first play where Shakespeare utilized the plot device of having a female disguise herself as a male, later used in such plays as As You Like It and Twelfth Night.

5) Launce is noted to have many similarities with the character Launcelot Gobbo, from The Merchant of Venice. Not only are their names similar but also their manners of speech, their occupations, and their similar dramatic functions in their respective plays.

Finally, David Bevington tries valiantly in the introduction to my version of the play to make us feel more at ease with it. He seems to maintain the notion that it is primarily about trust, that it “is in part a comedy of forgiveness, anticipating later plays in which the romantic protagonist is equally culpable and yet equally forgiven: Much Ado, Measure for Measure, All’s Well, Cymbeline.” I, however, have some trouble taking the two male lovers all that seriously, so I am not sure. He also refers to the resolution in the woods as taking place in the first of Shakespeare’s “green worlds,” which I accept, AND asserts that “the buffoonish comedy of Launce and Speed performs a function similar to that of romantic improbability of undercutting the Petrarchan seriousness of the love story.” This last rests a little less easily with me, as I found it hard to be serious about the love story at all.

Ernst

Two Gentlemen of Verona - Opening Remarks

Ladies and gentlemen (not of Verona),

Here we go! Two Gentlemen of Verona is a story of love and friendship, and the conflicts that nearly tear both apart for two men. Reading this play so soon after Romeo and Juliet, we might discuss how Two Gentlemen anticipates and provides a foil for the later play (if not As You Like It or Twelfth Night).

So often Shakespeare offers us pairs for comparison. Here we have Proteus, the inconstant (yes, that's a synonym for "protean") lover vs. Valentine (from the Latin for "strong") the true, faithful lover; and Julia, who sticks by her wayward man vs. Sylvia, who is kept away from her faithful man. What is revealed by these juxtapositions?

For me Two Gentlemen also has a number of disturbing elements for the contemporary reader. I'll ask about two:

First, I am frustrated by Julia's pursuit of Proteus, despite his cruelty. Helena, in Midsummer, has a similar turn, pursuing the scornful Demetrius: "What worser place can I beg in your love," she asks him, "Than to be used as you use your dog?" Yipes. Get thee to a therapist!

Julia's sad codependency is amplified by this play's persistent drumbeat of anti-woman slurs. Lucetta tells us, "I have no other [reason] but a woman's reason: / I think him so because I think him so" (1.2.23-24). Ah, yes. Women's intuition. Who needs all that reasoning stuff; leave that to men.

More shocking is Julia's statement that "maids in modesty say 'no' to that / Which they would have the profferer construe 'ay'!" (1.2.58-59). This is Shakespeare the frat boy, contending that women say 'no' when they mean 'yes.' Valentine reiterates this point later when he says "A woman sometime scorns what best contents her" (3.1.93). Perhaps it is the political correctness in me, but I find these moments jarring, not because I believe they no longer happen (they do), but because the misogyny I hear in them comes primarily from the women. Shakespeare uses their own words against them.

It's not like the men don't get a chance too. We get unadorned misogyny lite when Lance describes his future wife: "To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue" (3.1.335). Would that Lance were as virtuous. My question is this: In this play about betrayal and faithfulness, the women are blameless. Yet the portrayal of Julia and the sexist comments cut against the purity of their constancy. What is Shakespeare up to here?

Second, the ending. (Spoiler alert for those of you still finishing the play!) I count five abrupt "conversions," moments where a character changes and does the opposite of what would be consistent with normal human reaction. First, after attempting to rape Sylvia and having Valentine declaim his treachery and betrayals, Proteus about faces and apologizes ("forgive me"). Second, Valentine, despite the great wrongs done him, not by an enemy but by his closest friend, relents and accepts Proteus' apology ("I am paid"). Third, after jilting Julia and pursuing Sylvia full force despite her persistent rejections, Proteus tosses her over for Julia(!) in two lines ("What is in Sylvia's face but I may spy / More fresh in Julia's"). Fourth, Thurio, having vied for Sylvia's love longer than anyone else in the play, disposes of her immediately when faced with a threat from Valentine ("I care not for her"). And fifth, even though he has castigated Valentine for his improprietous love of Sylvia and banished him and finds him living with bandits, the Duke treats him like a prodigal son ("Thou art a gentleman, and well derived").

The time it takes for all these sudden shifts? 110 lines. Now, really. The success of a play, although it ought to be due to the writin' or the actin', is more frequently in its ability to establish a willing suspension of disbelief and maintain it, so that theater-goers can leave the imaginative space of the theater and say to themselves 'I have been in the presence of truth.' Act 5, scene 4 tears through the tissue of that belief like hob-nailed boots through rice paper.

How, I ask, do you stage this? How do you choreograph these characters so that the resolution does not seem like a 6-year-old's version of deus ex machina? Want a final challenge? After the fifth conversion, you only have 15 lines of play left. Ouch.

Yours,
Randall