{"id":202887,"date":"2026-01-31T08:30:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-31T13:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=202887"},"modified":"2026-06-21T11:38:26","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T15:38:26","slug":"2026-shakespeare-reading-project-two-gentlemen-of-verona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=202887","title":{"rendered":"2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: The Two Gentlemen of Verona"},"content":{"rendered":"

To continue:
\nShakespeare Reading Project<\/strong>
\nHenry VI<\/em>, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III<\/em><\/a> <\/p>\n

Scholars have been trying to justify and\/or explain or even make SENSE of the last two pages of The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em> for 400 years. You read it and go …. “Is there a page missing?” “Was a soliloquy cut?” <\/p>\n

Proteus is a sociopath. He’s in love with a woman, he dearly loves his best friend Valentine. He goes to visit Valentine, and immediately forgets he even has a girlfriend. He goes after his best friend’s girl in truly nefarious ways, betraying everyone simultaneously. Meanwhile, his girlfriend back home puts on boys’ clothes and goes after her man. In the last scene of the play, Proteus literally tries to rape the new girl and is only stopped by Valentine, who then reads Proteus the riot act. Proteus – who has been nothing but diabolical throughout – listens to the speech and says, “You are right. I am sorry.” Valentine says, “I accept your apology my dear friend.”<\/p>\n

And then …. they just go back to normal? <\/p>\n

After the sexual assault … 10 SECONDS AGO … you’re good? <\/p>\n

It’s funny to read scholars discuss this. They’re so connected to Shakespeare’s genius that they wrestle with his juvenilia. So they agonize about The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em>: Is Shakespeare being ironic? Is the “gentlemen” of the title … sarcastic? Harold Goddard’s two-volume book on the plays is good, but he definitely has a little bit of this over-justification at what is probably just a new-ish playwright imitating a Roman comedy, like, Harold, it’s not that deep. But Harold says something pretty funny: “If taken at face value, this play is inane”. <\/p>\n

I feel like it’s “both\/and”, Harold, and it’s okay. Taking this at face value doesn’t mean Hamlet is any less great. <\/p>\n

So I say:<\/p>\n

Take the play at face value AND it’s inane. <\/p>\n

Shakespeare didn’t really do “farces” but this is a farce. He’s trying it out. Normally in farces, though, when all the disguises are revealed, and all the lies and misunderstandings are untangled, you are left with a feeling of relief, “oh thank goodness everything is all right now!”<\/p>\n

But HERE, Proteus is SO bad that you end up feeling like “….. Ew.” No happy ending can include him!<\/p>\n

Back in the mid-2000s, there was a musical version put on in Central Park, and I went with my high school boyfriend. Because this is just how my life works. I am still friends with my high school prom date. The person who introduced me to the Marx Brothers, WC Fields, Mae West. We joined a film noir “group” at the local college, and we would walk there to see The Big Sleep<\/em> or whatever, because neither of us drove. Anyway. The music was written by the Hair<\/i> guys, so the songs were good. Rosario Dawson played Julia (the scorned girl back home). I still remember her dancing across the stage in her cap and pants, hair tucked up, since she was a boy. She was delightful. And so there were big dance breaks, and ensemble numbers, and there was a conga line, plus an actor rolling around in a dog’s suit … in my opinion, this is the only valid way you could possibly play this thing! Lord help you if you try to JUSTIFY that last scene or make it make some kind of sense. <\/p>\n

You CAN’T justify what happens in the last 10 minutes of this play. Don’t even try. (Don’t even try, CHiPS<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

I don’t know how you fix the problem that the following sequence of events …<\/p>\n

1. Attempted rape
\n2. Accusation
\n3. Forgiveness
\n4. Double wedding<\/p>\n

.. takes place in a 5-minute time period.<\/p>\n

W.H. Auden gave a series of lectures in 1946 on Shakespeare’s plays, they’ve been compiled in a book and I love it. I loved this comment from his lecture on The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em>: “In a tragedy, a character would die in a deception such as Proteus’.”<\/p>\n

Quotes on the play<\/h2>\n

\n<\/p>\n

\n 
\n <\/p>\n

“Most scholars date The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em> 1594, but it is much less advanced than The Comedy of Errors, and seems to me Shakespeare’s first extant comedy.”
\n— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em><\/p>\n

“In this play there is a strange mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of care and negligence. The versification is often excellent, the allusions are learned and just; but the author conveys his heroes by sea from one inland town to another in the same country; he places the Emperor of Milan and sends his young men to attend him, but never mentions him more; he makes Proteus, after an interview with Silvia, say he has only seen her picture, and, if we may credit the old copies, he has by mistaking places, left his scenery inextricable. The reason of all this confusion seems to be, that he took his story from a novel which he sometimes followed, and sometimes forsook, sometimes remembered, and sometimes forgot.”
\n— Samuel Johnson, Johnson on Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“The prose of Launce, like that of Falstaff and Benedick later, seems to have been created by the character himself.”
\n— Anne Barton, Riverside Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“If there is anything in this ironic way of taking it, [Shakespeare] apparently decided that it should live up to its title and that there should be not one genuine gentleman in it — except Launce, who, by a stroke that seems almost to prove the poet’s sarcastic purpose, is chivalric to his dog.”
\n— Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1<\/em><\/p>\n

“It is observable (I know not for what cause) that the style of this comedy is less figurative, and more natural and unaffected than the greater part of this author’s, tho’ supposed to be one of the first he wrote.”
\n— Alexander Pope<\/p>\n

“Either this is excellent burlesque of ‘gentlemanly’ manners and morals, or else the young author fooled himself as well as the rest of us by swallowing such silliness because it was sweetened by melodious verse. Take your choice.”
\n— Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1<\/em><\/p>\n

^^ See? He’s really wrestling with this play!<\/em><\/p>\n

“Shakespeare is like Chaucer. He is so full of humanity, humor, and poetry that it is easy to miss the cutting edge of his condemnation.”
\n— Harold Goddard, The Meaning of Shakespeare, Volume 1<\/em><\/p>\n

“… mingle [fun and feeling] so that wit and emotion are wedded in an atmosphere which is as grave as it is smiling, as golden as it is bright. This atmosphere, so natural to men’s life, so easy to breathe, and so mellow in its hue, is uniquely Shakespeare’s, and it will be sufficient for his purposes in comedy; in its amber light he can go anywhere and consider everything, and his people can speak with the richest variety.”
\n— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“The rhyme at the end is amateur, but Valentine has caught the tone which will be heard henceforth in the golden world of gentlemen where Shakespeare’s comedy will occur. It is a world whose free and graceful movement finds a symbol for itself in the travel of young men.”
\n— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“Friendship is one of the gods here, and he has given laws which Proteus will find it going against the grain to break; so that soliloquies will be necessary before he can comprehend the depth of his default.”
\n— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“To this observation of Mr. Pope, which is very just, Mr. Theobold has added, that this is one of Shakespeare’s worst plays, and is less corrupted than any other<\/i>. Mr. Upton peremptorily determines that if any art can be drawn from manner and style, the play must be sent packing and seek for its parent elsewhere<\/i>. How otherwise<\/i>, says he, do painters distinguish copies from originals, and have not authors their peculiar style and manner from which a true critic can form as unerring judgment as a Painter?<\/i> I am afraid this illustration of a critick’s science will not prove what is desired. A Painter knows a copy from an original by rules somewhat resembling these by which criticks know a transaction, which if it be literal, and literal it must be to resemble the copy of a picture, will be easily distinguished. Copies are known from originals even when the painter copies his own picture, so if an author should literally translate his work he would lose the manner of an original.”
\n— Samuel Johnson, Johnson on Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“Of quibbles there are many in the play; too many, since they are the only device yet known by Shakespeare for securing the effect of wit and he must overwork them.”
\n— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“There is in fact no gaiety in The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em> outside of a few scenes dealing with the sensible Launce and his unwanted dog.”
\n— Mark Van Doren, Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“I wish I had authority to leave [the second scene] out, but I have done all I could, set a mark of reprobation upon them, throughout this edition.”
\n— Alexander Pope, on the edition of Shakespeare’s plays he brought out. This is funny, his frank exasperation as an editor with Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em><\/p>\n

“Only farce is only<\/em> comic.”
\n— W.H. Auden, lecture on Two Gents, 1946<\/p>\n

“It is harder for the guilty to admit guilt and accept forgiveness than for the innocent to forgive. Many promising reconciliations have been wrecked because both sides were ready to forgive, but neither side was ready to be forgiven.”
\n— W.H. Auden, lecture on Two Gents, 1946<\/p>\n

I had to re-read that ^^ multiple times for it to sink in. I’m going to need to remember it. It seems like it would be useful in all kinds of situations. <\/em><\/p>\n

“[The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em> is] an anthology of bits and pieces waiting to be crafted into more compelling drama.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“The play is kind of a love cartoon, with a plethora of dominating fathers.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“Proteus does not fully appreciate, as the audience will, the determinative function of his name (the ‘changeable one’).”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“Maleness and femaleness are roles<\/em> on the Shakespearean stage.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“No one<\/em> is serious here — or, alternatively, everyone<\/em> is serious.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“[Launce’s] inadvertent language seems to know more ‘truth’ than he does.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“Launce’s swipe at Jews cannot be wished away; here and elsewhere in the plays the social caricature of the hard-hearted or mercenary Jew is casually invoked with the implication that most in the audience would recognize this characterization and agree with it.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“When I read this play I cannot but think that I discover both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakespeare. It is not indeed one of his most powerful effusions, it has neither many diversities of character, nor striking delineations of life, but it abounds in \u03b3\u03bd\u1ff6\u03bc\u03b1\u03b9 beyond most of his plays, and few have more lines or passages which, singly considered, are eminently beautiful. I am yet inclined to believe that it was not very successful, and suspect that it has escaped corruption, only because being seldom played it was less exposed to the hazards of transcription.”
\n— Samuel Johnson, Johnson on Shakespeare<\/em><\/p>\n

“The partialness of this sense of plenitude is perfectly ‘Shakespearean’; any play that ends with so firm a claim to ‘happiness’ is balanced on the edge of the disasters — that-did-not-happen, rewarding the characters for the moment, but cautioning the audience, at the same time, that such perfect satisfaction is indeed a matter of fortune as well as desert, and that its completion, as always, lies offstage.”
\n— Marjorie Garber, Shakespeare After All<\/em><\/p>\n

“Launce’s dog Crab … has more personality than anyone else in the play except Launce himself.”
\n— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em><\/p>\n

“Valentine, aptly called a ‘lubber’ (lout) by Launce, becomes worth consideration only when we take his perverseness seriously, since it appears to go considerably beyond a more repressed bisexuality. The peculiar relationship between Valentine and Proteus is<\/i> the play; one ought never to underestimate Shakespeare, and I uneasily sense that we have yet to understand The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em>, a very experimental comedy.”
\n— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em><\/p>\n

“To hear Launce go on about his dog is to apprehend the start of greatness in Shakespeare.”
\n— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em><\/p>\n

“Poor Silvia never utters another word in the play after she cries out ‘O heaven’ when the lustful Proteus seizes her to commence his intended rape. What is the actress playing Silvia supposed to do with herself during the final hundred lines of The Two Gentlemen of Verona<\/em>?”
\n— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em><\/p>\n

“Launce and his dog matter; for the rest, I have to conclude that Shakespeare cheerfully and knowingly travesties love and friendship alike, thus clearing the ground for the greatness of his high romantic comedies, from Love’s Labour’s Lost<\/em> through Twelfth Night<\/em>.”
\n— Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human<\/em><\/p>\n

On the song “Who is Silvia” in Act IV, scene 2:<\/em><\/p>\n

“The song, which is sung to Silvia, has standard Petrarchan rhetoric — cruel fair, faithful lover — but the music is being used with conscious evil intent.”
\n— W.H. Auden 1946 lecture<\/p>\n

Quotes from the play<\/h2>\n

VALENTINE:
\nAnd yet —
\nSILVIA:
\nA pretty period! Well — I guess the sequel
\nAnd yet I will not name it — and yet I care not —
\nAnds yet take this again — and yet I thank you —
\nMeaning henceforth to trouble you no more.
\nSPEED:
\nAnd yet you will, and yet another ‘yet’.
\n— Act II, sc i, 115-120<\/p>\n

What, gone without a word?
\nAy, so true love should do: it cannot speak
\nFor truth hath better deeds than words to grace it.
\n— PROTEUS, Act II, sc ii, 16-18<\/p>\n

O! the dog is me, and I am myself, ay, so, so.
\n— LAUNCE, Act II, sc iii, 22-23<\/p>\n

She is fair, and so is Julia that I love
\n(That I did love, for now my love is thaw’d,
\nWhich like a waxen image ‘gainst a fire
\nBears no impression of the thing it was)
\n— PROTEUS, Act II, sc iv, 199-202<\/p>\n

He is such a sociopath! I love how he changes the tense – “that I love \/ that I did love” – correcting himself. This puts thought literally into words and makes characters seem more alive: they talk in fits and starts, just like we do. We will see more and more of this but this is an early example.<\/em><\/p>\n

JULIA
\nO, know\u2019st thou not his looks are my soul\u2019s food?
\nPity the dearth that I have pin\u00e8d in
\nBy longing for that food so long a time.
\nDidst thou but know the inly touch of love,
\nThou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
\nAs seek to quench the fire of love with words.
\nLUCETTA
\nI do not seek to quench your love\u2019s hot fire,
\nBut qualify the fire\u2019s extreme rage,
\nLest it should burn above the bounds of reason.
\nJULIA
\nThe more thou damm\u2019st it up, the more it burns.
\nThe current that with gentle murmur glides,
\nThou know\u2019st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage,
\nBut when his fair course is not hinder\u00e8d,
\nHe makes sweet music with th\u2019 enameled stones,
\nGiving a gentle kiss to every sedge
\nHe overtaketh in his pilgrimage;
\nAnd so by many winding nooks he strays
\nWith willing sport to the wild ocean.
\nThen let me go and hinder not my course.
\n— Act II, sc vi, 16-33<\/p>\n

JULIA
\nBut tell me, wench, how will the world repute me
\nFor undertaking so unstaid a journey?
\nI fear me it will make me scandalized.
\nLUCETTA
\nIf you think so, then stay at home and go not.
\nJULIA
\nNay, that I will not.
\nLUCETTA
\nThen never dream on infamy, but go.
\nAct II, sc vi, 59-64<\/p>\n

Ay, ay, and she hath offered to the doom\u2014
\nWhich unreversed stands in effectual force\u2014
\nA sea of melting pearl, which some call tears;
\nThose at her father\u2019s churlish feet she tendered,
\nWith them, upon her knees, her humble self,
\nWringing her hands, whose whiteness so became
\nthem
\nAs if but now they wax\u00e8d pale for woe.
\n— PROTEUS, Act III, sc i, 224-230<\/p>\n

SPEED:
\n“Item: She is proud.”
\nLAUNCE:
\nOut with that too; it was Eve’s legacy, and cannot be ta’en from her.”
\n— Act III, sc i, 337-339<\/p>\n

You tell ’em, Launce!<\/em><\/p>\n

This week impress of love is as a figure
\nTrenched in ice, which with an hour’s heat
\nDissolves in water, and doth lose his form.
\n— DUKE, Act III, sc ii, 6-8<\/p>\n

For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews,
\nWhose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
\nMake tigers tame, and huge leviathans
\nForsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
\n— PROTEUS, Act III, sc ii, 77-88<\/p>\n

Are you content to be our general?
\nTo make a virtue of necessity.
\n— OUTLAW 2, Act IV, sc i, 59-60<\/p>\n

SILVIA:
\nWhat’s your will?
\nPROTEUS:
\nThat I may compass yours.
\n— Act IV, sc ii, 92<\/p>\n

… to worship shadows and adore false shapes …
\n— SILVIA, Act IV, sc ii, 130<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To continue: Shakespeare Reading Project Henry VI, parts 1, 2, 3 and Richard III Scholars have been trying to justify and\/or explain or even make SENSE of the last two pages of The Two Gentlemen of Verona for 400 years. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16],"tags":[2544,2606,168,1535,218],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=202887"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205615,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202887\/revisions\/205615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=202887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=202887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=202887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}