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Two Gentlemen of Verona
Critical Essays
June Schlueter, June Schlueter
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Two Gentlemen of Verona
Critical Essays
June Schlueter, June Schlueter
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Twenty-nine collected essays represent a critical history of Shakespeare's play as text and as theater, beginning with Samuel Johnson in 1765, and ending with a review of the Royal Shakespeare Company production in 1991. The criticism centers on three aspects of the play: the love/friendship debate.
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Part I
Criticism
Criticism
Excerpt from His Edition of The Plays of William Shakespeare (1765)
It is observable (I know not for what cause) that the stile of this comedy is less figurative, and more natural and unaffected than the greater part of this authorâs, thoâ supposed to be one of the first he wrote.âTope.
To this observation of Mr. Pope, which is very just, Mr. Theobald has added, that this is one of Shakespearâs worst plays, and is less corrupted than any other. Mr. Upton peremptorily determines, that if any proof can be drawn from manner and style, this play must be sent packing and seek for its parent elsewhere. How otherwise, says he, do painters distinguish copies from originals, and have not authors their peculiar style and manner from which a true critick can form as unerring a judgment as a Painter? I am afraid this illustration of a critickâs 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 translation, 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 authour should literally translate his work he would lose the manner of an original.
Mr. Upton confounds the copy of a picture with the imitation of a painterâs manner. Copies are easily known, but good imitations are not detected with equal certainty, and are, by the best judges, often mistaken. Nor is it true that the writer has always peculiarities equally distinguishable with those of the painter. The peculiar manner of each arises from the desire, natural to every performer, of facilitating his subsequent works by recurrence to his former ideas; this recurrence produces that repetition which is called habit. The painter, whose work is partly intellectual and partly manual, has habits of the mind, the eye and the hand, the writer has only habits of the mind. Yet, some painters have differed as much from themselves as from any other; and I have been told, that there is little resemblance between the first works of Raphael and the last. The same variation may be expected in writers; and if it be true, as it seems, that they are less subject to habit, the difference between their works may be yet greater.
But by the internal marks of a composition we may discover the authour with probability, though seldom with certainty. When I read this play I cannot but think that I discover both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakespear. 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 ÎłÏ
ÏΌαL 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.
Act I. Scene ii.
That this, like many other Scenes, is mean and vulgar, will be universally allowed; but that it was interpolated by the players seems advanced without any proof, only to give a greater licence to criticism.
Act II. Scene vii. (II.iv. 137-9)
Loveâs a mighty lord:
And hath so humbled me as, I confess,
There is no woe to his correction.
And hath so humbled me as, I confess,
There is no woe to his correction.
No misery that can be compared to the punishment inflicted by love. Herbert called for the prayers of the Liturgy a little before his death, saying, None to them, none to them.
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 Emperour at Milan and sends his young men to attend him, but never mentions him more; he makes Protheus, 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 remembred, and sometimes forgot.
Note
Reprinted from Johnson on Shakespeare. Ed. Walter Raleigh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1908, pp. 72â75.
Excerpt from Characters of Shakespearâs Plays (1817)
This is little more than the first outlines of a comedy loosely sketched in. It is the story of a novel dramatised with very little labour or pretension; yet there are passages of high poetical spirit, and of inimitable quaintness of humour, which are undoubtedly Shakespearâs, and there is throughout the conduct of the fable a careless grace and felicity which marks it for his. One of the editors (we believe Mr. Pope) remarks in a marginal note to the Two Gentlemen of Veronaâ
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 authorâs, though supposed to be one of the first he wrote.
Yet so little does the editor appear to have made up his mind upon this subject, that we find the following note to the very next (the second) scene.
This whole scene, like many others in these plays (some of which I believe were written by Shakespear, and others interpolated by the players) is composed of the lowest and most trifling conceits, to be accounted for only by the gross taste of the age he lived in: Populo ut placerent. I wish I had authority to leave them out, but I have done all I could, set a mark of reprobation upon them, throughout this edition.
It is strange that our fastidious critic should fall so soon from praising to reprobating. The style of the familiar parts of this comedy is indeed made up of conceitsâlow they may be for what we know, but then they are not poor, but rich ones. The scene of Launce with his dog (not that in the second, but that in the fourth act) is a perfect treat in the way of farcical drollery and invention; nor do we think Speedâs manner of proving his master to be in love deficient in wit or sense, though the style may be criticised as not simple enough for the modern taste.
Valentine. | Why, how know you that I am in love? |
Speed. | Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Protheus, to wreathe your arms like a malcontent, to relish a love-song like a robin-red-breast, to walk alone like one that had the pestilence, to sigh like a school-boy that had lost his ABC, to weep like a young wench that had buried her grandam, to fast like one that takes diet, to watch like one that fears robbing, to speak puling like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money; and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master. |
The tender scenes in this play, though not so highly wrought as in some others, have often much sweetness of sentiment and expression. There is something pretty and playful in the conversation of Julia with her maid, when she shews such a disposition to coquetry about receiving the letter from Protheus; and her behaviour afterwards and her disappointment, when she finds him faithless to his vows, remind us at a distance of Imogenâs tender constancy. Her answer to Lucetta, who advises her against following her lover in disguise, is a beautiful piece of poetry.
Lucetta. | I do not seek to quench your loveâs hot fire, But qualify the fireâs extremest rage, Lest it should burn above the bounds of reason. |
Julia. | The more thou dammâst it up, the more it burns; The current that with gentle murmur glides, Thou knowâst, being stoppâd, impatiently doth rage; But when his fair course is not hindered, He makes sweet music with thâ enamellâd stones, Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge He overtaketh in his pilgrimage: And so by many winding nooks he strays, With willing sport, to the wild ocean. Then let me go, and hinder not my course; Iâll be as patient as a gentle stream, And make a pastime of each weary step, Till the last step have brought me to my love; And there Iâll rest, as after much turmoil, A blessed soul doth in Elysium. |
If Shakespear indeed had written only this and other passages in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, he would almost have deserved Miltonâs praise of himâ
And sweetest Shakespear, Fancyâs child,
Warbles his native wood-notes wild.
Warbles his native wood-notes wild.
But as it is, he deserves rather more praise than this.
Note
Reprinted from Characters of Shakespearâs Plays [1817]. London: Oxford University Press, 1934, pp. 219-21.
Excerpt from A Study of Shakespeare (1880)
What was highest as poetry in the Comedy of Errors was mainly in rhyme; all indeed, we might say, between the prelude spoken by JEgeon and the appearance in the last scene of his wife: in Loveâs Labourâs Lost what was highest was couched wholly in blank verse; in the Two Gentlemen of Verona rhyme has fallen seemingly into abeyance, and there are no passages of such elegiac beauty as in the former, of such exalted eloquence as in the latter of these plays; there is an even sweetness, a simple equality of grace in thought and language which keeps the whole poem in tune, written as it is in a subdued key of unambitious harmony. In perfect unity and keeping the composition of this beautiful sketch may perhaps be said to mark a stage of advance, a new point of work attained, a faint but sensible change of manner, signalised by increased firmness of hand and clearness of outline. Slight and swift in execution as it is, few and simple as are the chords here struck of character and emotion, every shade of drawing and every note of sound is at one with the whole scheme of form and music. Here too is the first dawn of that higher and more tender humour which was never given in such perfection to any man as ultimately to Shakespeare; one touch of the by-play of Launce and his immortal dog is worth all the bright fantastic interludes of Boyet and Adriano, Costard and Holofernes; worth even half the sallies of Mercutio, and half the dancing doggrel or broad-witted prose of either DromioâŠ.
Note
Reprinted from A Study of Shakespeare [1880], New York: AMS Press, 1965, pp. 48-49.
âThe Female Pageâ From Disguise Plots in Elizabethan Drama (1915)
Dost thou think, though I am caparisonâd likea man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition?
âAs You Like It
I
Starting from medieval French romance, and threading her way through the novels or plays of Italy, the heroine in hose and doublet at last reached the England of Shakespeare, where she became the most graceful and charming figure on the stage.1 Perhaps in real life, too, the female page sometimes wandered through merry England. Queen Elizabeth herself once listened to an ambassador who offered to convey her secretly to Scotland, dressed like a page, in order that she might under this disguise see Queen Mary. Elizabeth appeared to like the plan, but answered with a sigh, saying âAlas! If I might do it thus!â2 At any rate we shall see that as a literary tradition, in the novels and on the stage, the disguised heroine was already established in England when Shakespeare wrote his Two Gentlemen of Verona.
By that time the female page had often appeared in nondramatic literature in English. Richâs Apolonius and Silla, the second novel in his Farewell, had used substantially the plot of Twelfth Night as early as 1581. The eighth novel, entitled Phylotus and Emelia, has the same female page plot as the anonymous comedy Philotus, which was printed in 1603, but which may be as early as Richâs novel.3 Sidneyâs Arcadia in 1590 told of Zelmane-page following Pyrocles unrewarded. And in the same year Lodgeâs Rosa-lynde presented the disguised heroine whom Shakespeare adopted. The prototype of Julia could have been found a decade earlier than the Two Gentlemen in the manuscript of Yongeâs translation of Montemayorâs Diana. A dozen of the ballads published by Percy or Child sing the fortunes of the lady disguised in male attire. Some of these too must have antedated and influenced the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.4
In order to show to what extent Shakespeare was influenced by stage traditions in choosing and elaborating the Julia disguise, we shall examine a number of female page plays produced in England before the Two Gentlemen. We shall see that Shakespeare profited by the weaknesses as well as by the merits of these plays. If he borrowed the potency of certain disguise situations, he invariably improved their dramatic efficiency.
As early as 1569-70 a Latin play, Byrsa Basilica5 had presented a girl in the apparel of a boy. The disguise is quite incidental, merely affording the heroine a method of escape from an awkward predicament.6
George Whetstoneâs Promos and Cassandra, which was printed in 1578, but was never acted, contains perhaps the earliest female page situation in the vernacular drama. Cassandra enters âapparelled like a pageâ (Part I, iii, 7), soliloquizes a few lines and goes out to keep her appointment with Lord Promos. She ne...