THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA" is far from ranking among the greatest or most famous plays of Shakespeare, but it has many points of extreme interest. It is remarkable for its comparative deficiency in Shakespeare's supreme gift, his insight into human nature. It is not that the poet fails in the endeavour to portray character; he simply makes no attempt to penetrate below the surface, and is con tent to produce such a comedy of mere incident as might have proceeded from a dramatist wedded to classical tradition. This alone, were the fact not certain on other accounts, would prove the play to be a production of his youth. On the other hand, the action, with some trifling exceptions, is linked together with an ease and grace which might have been thought to betoken some previous practice, and certainly appear in advance of "Love's Labour's Lost" and "The Comedy of Errors." One charm the play possesses which in the nature of things could not belong to a fruit of the writer's maturity: it breathes the inspiration of eager, thoughtless, irresponsible youth. Except the nearly contemporaneous "Romeo and Juliet," none of Shakespeare's pieces is so entirely youthful in sentiment. And when we consider that this aroma of adolescence must at the time have clung around Shakespeare himself, we may expect the drama to throw a reflex light upon the dramatist at the most truly critical, though not the most brilliant or eventful, period of his life. These points will demand discussion, but before arriving at them it will be necessary to establish a foundation by determining the date of the play and the source of the plot; neither investigations, fortunately, presenting any serious difficulty. Not only is "The Two Gentlemen of Verona” unanimously regarded as one of Shakespeare's earliest works, but there are two reasons, slight but not entirely devoid of weight, for considering it as the earliest of any. It is placed first of the comedies in Francis Meres' list (1598); and though Meres could not be expected to name the plays in strict chronological succession, which he may not have known, his order is so nearly that which, quite independently of him, has been established by considerations of external and internal evidence as to render it pretty certain that he did not set them down at random. Again, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" is the first play in the Folio in succession to "The Tempest." This latter drama, though in fact the last, or almost the last, of Shakespeare's compositions, was selected by the editors of the First Folio for the post of honour, probably from the feeling that the earliest plays were too slight to form the portal of so great an edifice. It would be only natural that, due concession thus made to the artistic sentiment, the claims of chronology should next find recognition; and, in fact, the succession of the comedies in the Folio does appear to be roughly chronological. It is, on the other hand, true, as has already been remarked, that "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" exhibits an advance in dramatic construction upon "The Comedy of Errors" and "Love's Labour's Lost," the other very early plays; but it must be remembered that one of these is a farce adapted from ancient models, and the other a satire, where the evolution of plot is designedly made secondary to the dazzle of dialogue. The question of absolute priority, however, is not material to the play's especial significance and especial claim to indulgence as a youthful work, for there can be little question that it appeared at some time within the period 1589-1592. The source of the plot is equally certain. It is without doubt expanded from an episode in the second book of Jorge de Montemayor's famous Spanish romance, "La Diana Enamorada," where Felismena is represented as disguising herself in man's apparel, entering the service of her false lover as a page, and employed by him to recommend his suit to the new object of his devotion, precisely Julia's relations to Proteus and Silvia. Shakespeare, indeed, has ingeniously and with enhanced dra matic effect complicated the plot, and provided for a fortunate solution by giving the false knight a friend to whom he is as treacherous as to his mistress, but the essence of the situation is in Montemayor. Some editors have doubted the connection between the novel and the play, on the ground that ladies disguised in men's attire are not infrequent figures in dramas and romances. But they have merely taken a general view of the plot, and overlooked the minutia which demonstrate the connection. If we compare the scene between Julia and her maid in the play with Felismena's account of the same incident in the novel, we cannot doubt that the later author had read his predecessor. Julia. What ho! Lucetta! Jul. Is it near dinner time? Luc. What would your ladyship? I would it were; That you might kill your stomach on your meat, And not upon your maid. Jul. What is 't that you Took up so gingerly? To take up a paper that I let fall. Nothing concerning me. Jul. And is that paper nothing? Luc. Jul. Some love of yours has writ to you in rhyme. |