The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Act I

ACT I

SCENE i

The setting is Verona in north-central Italy, although Verona is named only four times in the play (Carroll 75). Valentine and Proteus are sworn brothers, but even the very first lines are “sundering” (Garber 44). Valentine wants Proteus (consider the implications of the names) to travel with him to Milan, “To see the wonders of the world abroad / [Rather] Than (living dully sluggardiz’d at home) / Wear out thy youth with shapeless idleness” (I.i.6-8); “for in Shakespeare’s time, a period of travel in youth was considered an essential part of the education of a young man” (Asimov, I 465) — yeah, for the wealthy and privileged! Not for grain-merchants. [This desire for travel is all very much the de Vere theme of the 1570s (Farina 26).] “This is an argument that a restless young gentleman of means in England might well have offered against the contemporary Puritan view held in high places there — such as those of Elizabeth’s minister, Lord Burghley — that travel in Italy was corrupting” (Roe 37).

But Proteus is in love and wants to stay in Verona. Like Palamon and Arcite of The Two Noble Kinsmen, “These young men are at a crucial stage of life, the stage at which the demands of love are beginning to take precedence over youthful camaraderie” (Wells 40).

The two exchange wit about drowning and pun on the word “boots.” Valentine is skeptical about love:

Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn’d to folly, blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure, even in the prime,
And all the fair effects of future hopes.
(I.i.47-50)

For the older topical draft of the play, the Oxfordian proposal is that we have allusions to the Alencon match in 1579 (Ogburn and Ogburn 222). Valentine leaving parallels Alencon leaving England to be Prince of the Flemings, which was a hazardous undertaking (Ogburn and Ogburn 224). So it’s the pursuit of honour for him, love for Proteus, representing Simier, who enjoyed a disturbingly close relationship with Elizabeth (Ogburn and Ogburn 224). Oxfordians, especially more recent ones, also see The Two Gentlemen as “Shakespeare-Oxford splitting himself into Valentine and Proteus, the loyal and treacherous sides of his nature” (Beauclerk 142). Hence two gentlemen of Ver-ona = one Vere (Ogburn and Ogburn 222). “Of the Two Gentlemen (of one Ver), Valentine is the courtier and idealist side of the Earl, who sets forth to travel; Proteus is the darker, the creative, side” (Ogburn and Ogburn 971).

That Valentine refers to being immediately “shipp’d” (I.i.54) has caused critics to insist that Shakespeare is ignorant of or reckless with Italian geographical details: how can Valentine take a sea-voyage from Verona to Milan when both are inland cities? E.g., “Verona isn’t a seaport” (Asimov, I 467). Countless “commentators have tried to find blunders to belittle his knowledge. However, the historical references and geographical descriptions present in Two Gentlemen correspond with facts” (Magri 59). Ogburn speculates that “Valentine’s being shipped from Verona harks back to the dramatist’s own embarkation from one Italian port to another, perhaps to an original conception of the play, before Verona was decided on” (308). But even Asimov acknowledges that the Adige river would have sufficed (467), and Farina reminds us of the significant inland waterways and canals making intercity travel not only possible but common, including from Verona to Milan, with Mantua in between (27; cf. Magri 60; Roe 40, 52ff).

Also on the topic of Shakespeare’s Italian knowledge, one editor writes that we “might have expected some reference to the two most remarkable landmarks of Verona, the Piazza Bra and the Arena, one of the largest surviving Roman amphitheatres in the world” (Carroll 76). I’ve been to Verona several times and have never heard of these sites!

Proteus remains committed to love, not adventures or “honor” (I.i.63), and he anticipates Valentine, a mocker of love (despite his name), will be smitten at some point. It seems as if we are expected to take a “sympathetic if slightly patronizing interest” in these two (Wells 41). “These young men are at a crucial stage of life, the stage at which the demands of love are beginning to take precedence over youthful camaraderie” (Wells 40). So the play begins just barely with the “paradisal twinship prior to differentiation” (Garber 44). Valentine departs and Proteus notes to himself that Julia has “metamorphosed” him (I.i.66). [The rare word is “reminiscent” of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the first English translation of which was managed by Oxford’s uncle, Arthur Golding (Clark 307).] “At its worst in the play, metamorphosis is a kind of disease, comic in Valentine, but almost demonic in Proteus, whose helplessly metamorphic condition represents a terrifying triumph of unconstrained desire” (Carroll 25).

Valentine’s servant, the cheeky Speed, banters with Proteus a while about sheephood. [Use of the terms “sheep” and “mutton” call to mind Sir Christopher Hatton — these were Elizabeth’s nicknames for him (Clark 305-306; Ogburn and Ogburn 226).] The casting of a young, pathologically cheery boy on the part of the BBC production is ill-advised, considering Speed’s occasionally bawdy jokes (e.g., I.i.79f) and the drinking alluded to later. Proteus had sent Speed on an errand to deliver a love letter to Julia, but Speed has received a cold reaction and irks Proteus with punning and chop-logic. Speed is a “trifler and trickster with words” which quickly grows tiresome (Goddard, I 44), as it seems Shakespeare himself eventually will feel too. Proteus dismisses Speed: “Go, go, be gone, to save your ship from wrack, / Which cannot perish having thee aboard, / Being destin’d to a drier death on shore” (I.i.148-150). The notion is proverbial and occurs in The Tempest too.

SCENE ii

Julia discusses with her waiting-woman Lucetta the advisability of love. “Julia and her maid Lucetta of The Two Gentlemen of Verona … are simply an earlier presentment of Portia and Nerissa in The Merchant of Venice…; their scenes occur at exactly the same time in the action of the two plays” (Ogburn and Ogburn 229). (One might add Rosalind and Celia in As You Like It.) The elder Ogburns think that intervening events in the late 1570s shifted de Vere’s attentions from this play to the early version of The Merchant of Venice (Ogburn and Ogburn 229).

Lucetta thinks Julia’s suitor Sir Eglamour is okay, and Mercatio is rich, but Proteus is best. Much of this dialogue occurs in rhyming verse:

Julia: They do not love that do not show their love.
Lucetta: O, they love least that let men know their love.
(I.ii.31-32)

Julia, feigning haughty indifference, acts alternately irritated and sympathetic about Proteus’ letter (which we were led to believe he had delivered directly to her: another example of botched revision?). After some intelligent musical wordplay, Julia tears up the letter, then immediately regrets it: “O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!” (I.ii.102). She examines fragments with amusingly sentimental anthropomorphism, so that it is as if love text has come to life: much like this play itself. Lucetta calls Julia off to dinner.

SCENE iii

Proteus’ father, Antonio, in whom the elder Ogburns sense the older Oxford (Ogburn and Ogburn 979), listens to his servant Panthino explain that Antonio’s brother (Valentine’s father) is surprised that Antonio has Proteus remain home “While other men, of slender reputation, / Put forth their sons to seek preferment out” (I.iii.6-7). The term “importune” occurs a couple times (I.iii.13, 17), suggesting that Oxford is thinking of a poem echoed later in the play (Ogburn and Ogburn 973). Antonio agrees that Proteus should join Valentine at the court of the “Emperor” in Milan — he’ll be a Duke later; aristocratic titles are “hazy” at this point (Wells 40). (This is also another de Vere advertisement for travel.) Proteus arrives in a love-fog with a letter from Julia: “Here is her hand, the agent of her heart” (I.iii.46) — a line prefiguring something similar in Much Ado About Nothing. Proteus tells Antonio the letter is actually from Valentine; nevertheless, Antonio decides Proteus must prepare to go abroad. Proteus reflects briefly on his plight.