The friendship of the ‘two gentlemen’—Valentine and Proteus—is strained when both fall in love with Silvia. Proteus has followed Valentine from Verona to Milan, leaving behind his beloved Julia, who in turn follows him, disguised as a boy. At the climax of the action Valentine displays the depth of his friendship by offering Silvia to Proteus. The conflicting claims of love and friendship illustrated in this plot had been treated in a considerable body of English literature written by the time Shakespeare wrote his play in, or shortly before, 1590. John Lyly’s didactic fiction Euphues (1578) was an immensely popular example; and Lyly’s earliest plays, such as Campaspe (1584) and Endimion (1588), influenced Shakespeare’s style as well as his subject matter. Shakespeare was writing in a fashionable mode, but his story of Proteus and Julia is specifically (though perhaps indirectly) indebted to a prose fiction, Diana, written in Spanish by the Portuguese Jorge de Montemayor and first published in 1559. Many other influences on the young dramatist may be discerned: his idealized portrayal of Silvia and her relationship with Valentine derives from the medieval tradition of courtly love; Arthur Brooke’s long poem The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet (1562) provided some details of the plot; and the comic commentary on the romantic action supplied by the page-boy Speed and the more rustic clown Lance has dramatic antecedents in English plays such as Lyly’s early comedies.
Though the play was presumably acted in Shakespeare’s time, its first recorded performance is in 1762, in a rewritten version at Drury Lane. Later performances have been sparse, and the play has succeeded best when subjected to adaptation, increasing its musical content, adjusting the emphasis of the last scene so as to reduce the shock of Valentine’s donation of Silvia to Proteus, and updating the setting. It can be seen as a dramatic laboratory in which Shakespeare first experimented with conventions of romantic comedy which he would later treat with a more subtle complexity, but it has its own charm. If the whole is not greater than the parts, some of the parts—such as Lance’s brilliant monologues, and the delightful scene (4.2) in which Proteus serenades his new love with ‘Who is Silvia?’ while his disguised old love, Julia, looks wistfully on—are wholly successful. And Lance’s dog, Crab, has the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon: this is an experiment that Shakespeare did not repeat.
THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY
DUKE of Milan
SILVIA, his daughter
PROTEUS, a gentleman of Verona
LANCE, his clownish servant
VALENTINE, a gentleman of Verona
SPEED, his clownish servant
THURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine
ANTONIO, father of Proteus
PANTHINO, his servant
JULIA, beloved of Proteus
LUCETTA, her waiting-woman
HOST, where Julia lodges
EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape
OUTLAWS
Servants, musicians
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
1.1 Enter Valentine and Proteus
VALENTINE
Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus.
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits.
Were’t not affection chains thy tender days
To the sweet glances of thy honoured love,
I rather would entreat thy company
To see the wonders of the world abroad
Than, living dully sluggardized at home,
Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness.
But since thou lov’st, love still, and thrive therein—
Even as I would, when I to love begin.
PROTEUS
Wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu.
Think on thy Proteus when thou haply seest
Some rare noteworthy object in thy travel.
Wish me partaker in thy happiness
When thou dost meet good hap; and in thy danger—
If ever danger do environ thee—
Commend thy grievance to my holy prayers;
For I will be thy beadsman, Valentine.
VALENTINE
And on a love-book pray for my success?
PROTEUS
Upon some book I love I’ll pray for thee.
VALENTINE
That’s on some shallow story of deep love—
How young Leander crossed the Hellespont.
PROTEUS
That’s a deep story of a deeper love,
For he was more than over-shoes in love.
VALENTINE
‘Tis true, for you are over-boots in love,
And yet you never swam the Hellespont.
PROTEUS
Over the boots? Nay, give me not the boots.
VALENTINE
No, I will not; for it boots thee not.
PROTEUS
What?
VALENTINE
To be in love, where scorn is bought with groans,
Coy looks with heart-sore sighs, one fading moment’s
mirth
With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights.
If haply won, perhaps a hapless gain;
If lost, why then a grievous labour won;
However, but a folly bought with wit,
Or else a wit by folly vanquished.
PROTEUS
So by your circumstance you call me fool.
VALENTINE
So by your circumstance I fear you’ll prove.
PROTEUS
‘Tis love you cavil at. I am not love.
VALENTINE
Love is your master, for he masters you,
And he that is so yoked by a fool
Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.
PROTEUS
Yet writers say ‘As in the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells, so doting love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.’
VALENTINE
And writers say ‘As the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turned to folly, blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.’
But wherefore waste I time to counsel thee