The Two Gentlemen of Verona

• 1. Introduction

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  The Two Gentlemen of Verona holds a peculiar distinction among Shakespeare's works: it may be the play that started everything. Written somewhere between 1589 and 1593, it features a cast of characters so small that no other Shakespeare play matches it for slimness. Yet tucked inside this modest comedy is the first appearance of one of Shakespeare's signature moves: a heroine who disguises herself as a boy. From the servants who steal every scene to the final moment that has baffled critics for centuries, this early work raises questions that scholars are still arguing about today. What does it mean when a man offers the woman he loves to the man who just tried to rape her? And can a play that everyone agrees is flawed still reveal something essential about the playwright who wrote it?

• 2. A Play Written First

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  Edmond Malone first floated the idea in 1821, in the Third Variorum edition of Shakespeare's plays, that Two Gentlemen may have been the first thing Shakespeare ever wrote for the stage. The Oxford Shakespeare placed it first in its 1986 edition, then again in 2005, and again in the New Oxford Shakespeare of 2016. The Norton Shakespeare of 1997 and The Complete Pelican Shakespeare of 2002 did the same. Scholars disagree about the precise year: Clifford Leech argues for 1592-1593; Gary Taylor suggests 1590-1591; Kurt Schlueter posits the late 1580s; Roger Warren tentatively suggests 1587 but acknowledges 1590-1591 as more likely. The case for it being first rests largely on its weaknesses. Writing in 1968, Norman Sanders observed that all critics agreed on the play's immaturity. Stanley Wells pointed to scenes with more than four characters, where at least one person tends to fall silent; Speed, for example, is mute for nearly all of Act 2, Scene 4. Warren went further, hypothesising that the play may have been drafted before Shakespeare even arrived in London, with the famous comic actor Richard Tarlton in mind for the role of Launce. Tarlton died in September 1588, which complicates that theory, though passages in the play seem to borrow from John Lyly's Midas, which was not written until at least late 1589.

• 3. Where the Story Came From

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  Shakespeare borrowed the bones of his plot from a Spanish prose romance, Los Siete Libros de la Diana, written by the Portuguese author Jorge de Montemayor and published in 1559. In Diana's second book, a woman named Felismena follows the man she loves in disguise, becomes his page, and watches him pursue another woman entirely. The parallels with Julia's story are precise. Shakespeare could have encountered this material in a French translation by Nicholas Collin from 1578, or in an English manuscript by Bartholomew Young, who claims to have finished his translation around 1582 though it was not published until 1598. A lost English play, The History of Felix and Philomena, performed for the court at Greenwich Palace by the Queen's Men on the 3rd of January 1585, may also have bridged the gap. A second major source was Thomas Elyot's The Boke Named the Governour, published in 1531, which tells the story of Titus and Gisippus: two inseparable friends whose bond fractures when a woman enters the picture, and who ultimately place their friendship above love. The same story appears in Boccaccio's Decameron, but verbal similarities between Two Gentlemen and Elyot's text suggest Shakespeare went to Elyot rather than Boccaccio. Geoffrey Bullough has argued that Shakespeare's debt to John Lyly's Euphues, published in 1578, was more one of technique than of plot.

• 4. The Controversial Final Scene

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  At line 5.4.83, Valentine says to Proteus: "All that was mine in Silvia I give thee." Those twelve words have generated more critical argument than almost anything else in the play. Hilary Spurling, writing in 1970, described the moment bluntly: Valentine is so overcome by Proteus's apology that he offers to hand over his beloved to the man who, not three minutes before, had meant to rape her. For many years that reading dominated. But another school of thought, represented by Jeffrey Masten, holds that Valentine is not handing Silvia away at all; he is simply promising to love Proteus as much as he loves Silvia, thus reconciling friendship and romantic love rather than choosing between them. Roger Warren points to stage productions as evidence for this gentler reading. In Robin Phillips' 1970 RSC production, Valentine kisses Silvia, speaks the line, then kisses Proteus. In Edward Hall's 1998 Swan Theatre production, after Valentine speaks, Silvia walks toward him and takes his hand; they remain holding hands for the rest of the play. Leon Rubin's 1984 Stratford Shakespeare Festival production simply altered the line itself to "All my love to Silvia I also give to thee." Kurt Schlueter, in his 1990 New Cambridge Shakespeare edition, takes yet another view: Valentine does give Silvia away, but the play is written for a young audience predisposed to read it as farce, and the absurdity is the point. William C. Carroll, in his 2004 Arden Shakespeare edition, agrees that the gift is real, but frames it as a culturally logical act: in Renaissance thought, male friendship was considered a purer bond than romantic love, and offering a woman from one male friend to another was, from that vantage point, the highest expression of devotion rather than a betrayal.

• 5. Launce, Crab, and the Art of Contrast

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  Proteus and Valentine speak in blank verse; their servants speak in prose. That gap in register is not accidental. Shakespeare uses it to expose the gap between the idealized love his gentlemen profess and the practical reality his servants inhabit. In Act 3, Scene 1, Valentine delivers a long lament about his banishment, insisting that without Silvia there is no music in the nightingale and no day worth looking at: "Except I be by Silvia in the night/There is no music in the nightingale./Unless I look on Silvia in the day/There is no day for me to look upon" (lines 178-181). A few lines later, Launce enters and proceeds, with Speed's help, to weigh the virtues and defects of his own beloved: she brews good ale, she can knit, she can wash and scour; but she hath a sweet mouth, she talks in her sleep, she is slow in words. Launce's final verdict is that his intended hath "more hair than wit, and more faults than hairs, and more wealth than faults" (lines 343-344), and her wealth "makes the faults gracious" (line 356). The pure materialism of that conclusion stands in sharp relief against Valentine's spiritual yearning. Launce's dog, Crab, has been described as carrying "the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon." Peter Hall's 1960 RSC production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre featured a much-praised performance by Patrick Wymark as Launce, and Hall chose the play as his inaugural production when he was newly appointed artistic director of the company.

• 6. A Stage History of Reinvention

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  The play was not printed until 1623, when it appeared in the First Folio. The first recorded performance came much later: in 1762 at Drury Lane, in a version substantially rewritten by Benjamin Victor, who removed Valentine's offer of Silvia entirely, repositioned Launce and Crab as central figures in the outlaw scenes, and recast the two male leads not as old friends but as mere acquaintances. The first performance of anything close to Shakespeare's own text was at Covent Garden in 1784, advertised as "Shaxespeare's with alterations." It closed after one night. From the mid-eighteenth century onward, cutting the offer-of-Silvia lines was standard practice; William Macready restored them in his 1841 Drury Lane production, though productions were still removing them as late as Denis Carey's 1952 staging at the Bristol Old Vic. The twentieth century brought waves of experiment. The RSC's 1970 production cast Helen Mirren as Julia and Patrick Stewart as Launce, setting the play in a decadent world of social elitism where the outlaws wore animal skins. David Thacker's 1991 Swan Theatre production featured an on-stage band playing Cole Porter and George Gershwin throughout, with Hugh Bonneville (then credited as Richard Bonneville) as Valentine. In 2012, a production under the name Vakomana Vaviri Ve Zimbabwe performed the entire play in Shona with a cast of exactly two actors, Denton Chikura and Tonderai Munyevu, including a run at the Globe Theatre during the Globe to Globe Festival.

• 7. Beyond the Stage

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  Franz Schubert set Proteus's serenade to Silvia, "Who is Silvia? What is she," to music in 1826, working from a German translation by Eduard von Bauernfeld. The song is known in German as "An Sylvia," catalogued as opus 106, number 4, D. 891. Gerald Finzi included his own setting of "Who Is Silvia?" in his 1942 song cycle Let Us Garlands Bring, taking the cycle's title from the final line of the same song. The most commercially successful adaptation is the 1971 rock musical, which opened at the St. James Theatre in New York on the 1st of December 1971. Galt MacDermot composed the music; John Guare wrote both the book and the lyrics; Mel Shapiro wrote the book and directed. The original cast included Raul Julia as Proteus. The show ran for 614 performances, closing on the 20th of May 1973, and won two Tony Awards: Best Musical and Best Book. It transferred to London's Phoenix Theatre on the 26th of April 1973, running for 237 performances. A 2005 Shakespeare in the Park revival at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, directed and choreographed by Kathleen Marshall, starred Oscar Isaac as Proteus and Rosario Dawson as Julia. The play also makes a cameo in Shakespeare in Love, the 1998 film written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, where Queen Elizabeth, played by Judi Dench, falls asleep during a performance of it and is delighted by a dog thoroughly upstaging the cast.