Wells thinks this is Shakespeare’s “first surviving play” partly because of its slightness: e.g., it has the smallest cast list (40), and because of “the difficulty that [Shakespeare] seems to experience in orchestrating scenes in which more than three or four characters are involved” (Wells 40). Bloom declares it “the weakest of all Shakespeare’s comedies” (36), at best maybe an “experimental comedy” (Bloom 36). Goddard acknowledges it “contains some of the most boring ‘wit'” (I 42). Asimov declares it “the most forgettable” work (Asimov, I 465) and even wonders if “the version we now have is a mangled copy of the real play” (465). But this is the play being presented to Queen Elizabeth near the start of Shakespeare in Love, and as Henslowe says of it and its audience, “Comedy. Love and a bit with a dog. That’s what they want.”
The play contains numerous themes and moments that will remind you of other more famous, and better, Shakespeare plays, to which it serves in some ways as a “limping forerunner” (Anne Barton in the Riverside introduction 177). In this respect, it is “an anthology of bits and pieces waiting to be crafted into more compelling drama (Garber 43). Julia, for example, seems to be the first instance we have of Shakespeare putting a female character in male disguise. But the “orchestration” of these themes is crude at this stage (Barton 178).
The closest source of the play seems to be Diana Enamorada (“Diana in Love”), written in Spanish by the Portuguese Jorge de Montemayor in 1542 but not translated into English until 1598 (Asimov 465, Magri 57, Farina 25, Beauclerk 142). Earlier (c.1350), Boccaccio’s “Tito and Gesippo” in his Decameron (X.8) may be cited, as one “gentleman” hands over his fiancée to his friend (Magri 57, Chiljan 65). Thomas Elyot offers an adaptation in his 1531 Book named the Governour (Magri 57, Chiljan 65). The friendship theme, or friendship vs. love, could be found in the Palamon and Arcite stories, and perhaps Damon and Pithias (credited to Richard Edwards in 1565) was an influence (Barton 178). On record is a Queen’s Revels performance of The History of Titus and Gissipus on February 19, 1577 (Chiljan 63). An account records expenses for crimson taffeta for “Senatours,” which is accurate for Venetian political garb and likely for this performance (Magri 62). Was Two Italian Gentlemen an influence? It is credited to Anthony Munday, who was a secretary to Oxford (Farina 26). We also have a performance at court on December 26, 1579 of another lost Revels play: “A history of the Duke of Millayn and the Marques of Mantua” (Clark 298, Chiljan 65). The Two Gentlemen of Verona is listed by Meres in 1598 as among Shakespeare’s plays, but it does not appear until the First Folio (Farina 25).
In Oxfordian studies, although the elder Ogburns favor an early 1570s date (Ogburn and Ogburn 971), Eva Turner Clark considers the play from the late 1570s and reads it as a loose allegory to the state of affairs between Queen Elizabeth (Silvia) and the Duke of Alençon (Valentine) with Verona representing Paris, Milan as London, and Mantua as Flanders. Proteus she reads as envoy Simier, who was to conduct marriage negotiations between Elizabeth and Alençon but began wooing her himself. Speed, she says, is Christopher Hatton, but Thurio is more likely, I’d say. (Speed is too sharp.) There’s another Oxfordian speculation that the title translates into Two Gentlemen of Ver-Ona, or The Two Gentlemen from One Vere (Ogburn and Ogburn 222, 979; Ogburn 521), a psycholiterary notion that may begin to explain the bizarre features of the last scene.
Even orthodox critics detect phases of revision (Barton 177), which makes Oxfordian sense. The admitted “lyrical grace” (Wells 41) of the play would “suggest that it was the work of a man still more at home with narrative or lyrical verse than with drama” (Barton 178). Wells praises this “appealing verse, passages of which would be entirely at home in the poetical anthologies of the period” (Wells 41) — perhaps, for example, A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act by Act
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Intro
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act I
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act II
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act III
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act IV
The Two Gentlemen of Verona Act V
Further Resources
Filmography
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. BBC, 1983.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 2014.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Best Editions
Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 6th ed. Pearson Education Inc., 2009. 75-107.
Carroll, William C., ed. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The Arden Shakespeare. 3rd Series. NY: Bloomsbury, 2004.
Oxfordian Resources
Clark, Eva Turner. Hidden Allusions in Shakespeare’s Plays. 3rd ed. by Ruth Loyd Miller. Port Washington: Kennikat Press, 1974. 298-315.
Farina, William. De Vere as Shakespeare: An Oxfordian Reading of the Canon. Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2006. 25-29.
Graves, Charles. “Two Gentlemen of Verona – A Euphistic Story by Edward de Vere.” The De Vere Society, 2022. Here.
Noemi Magri. “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” In Dating Shakespeare’s Plays. Ed. Kevin Gilvary. Tunbridge Wells, UK: Parapress, 2010. 56-64.
Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & The Reality. 2nd ed. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc., 1992.
Ogburn, Dorothy and Charlton Ogburn. This Star of England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, Pub., 1952. Esp. 222-229, 971-980.
Roe, Richard Paul. The Shakespeare Guide to Italy. NY: Harper, 2011. Chapters 2 & 3: 35-85.
And Other General Resources
Goddard, Harold C. The Meaning of Shakespeare. Vol. 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1951. 41-47.
Smidt, Kristian. Unconformities in Shakespeare’s Early Comedies. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. 39-58. Smidt finds numerous time discrepancies suggesting significant revision.
Shakespeare Authorship Organizations
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. Browse, get hooked, become a member.
The De Vere Society. Our Oxfordian friends and collaborators across the pond.
The Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable. We consider all possible authors behind the “Shakespeare” name.