Regarding Comments About The Ending

Since the comments I'm responding to are from members who don't seem to be active any longer, I decided to start a new thread on how this play ends, and the point of the play in general. I'm still reading Two Gentlemen of Verona, but I'm aware of its slapstick ending. The two earlier comments: Proteus is shallow, and the women are too forgiving. I agree with both these comments, but I think that that was Shakespeare's intention. Consider this, if you were a 'Lady' or a 'Gentleman' of the late 16th or early 17th century, how would you feel about being so portrayed? If I thought of my self so self-importantly as the gentry apparently did, I'd be downright indignant and feel quite insulted. Even the servants of such high and mighty folks, who feel as though they have privileged positions in their own right, would feel put upon by Lance's and Speed's imbecilic antics. And there are scenes that would absolutely outrage the cultivated senses of that period's Ladies. The scene that depicts the letter exchange between Julia and Lucetta is outrageously bold, because there are clues enough to determine what Proteus's letter is actual a metaphor for (along with the hintful associations that come to mind with Shakespeare's use of the words: modesty, broker, wanton, youth, and last but not least, office). And to cap that scene off, once Julia is alone, Shakespeare rips away her veneer of modesty by having her pick up the letter and treating it as if it were something precious.

Remember who Shakespeare's audience for this play most likely consisted of. His audience for this play was most likely made up of the common folk, people of the lower echelon who saved up their pennies to sit in the playhouses or stand as groundlings in front of the stage. This play mocks their betters, and the audience probably loved it. The women in that audience must have been howling with derisive laughter during that letter scene. The fickleness of the men, the degradation of the women by their lovers and by themselves, the ridiculous slapstick finish, all gave the audience a chance to laugh at the people who ruled the world. If a main point was to mock the upper crust of society, then the ending was perfect.

I wouldn't be surprised if this play never saw the inside of any nobleman's, or Lord's (as they were called) court.

I think you have a few misguided points about the nobility of the late 16th century, as well as Shakespeare's audience.

Shakespeare did have a flare for satire - but if we use his works as evidence, this does not emerge until the what is referred to as "the mature years' (post-Hamlet to give a general timeframe). The Shakespeare of 1592 (estimated date for publication of TGOV) was still finding his way. TGOV was his first comedy, and indebted both to the early Renaissance tradition of comedy and the Roman tradition of comedy. So to say that this play is slapstick is fitting, but to look for the deep characterization that we find in later Shakespeare is not so easy to demonstrate.

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Originally Posted by Charles Darnay

I think you have a few misguided points about the nobility of the late 16th century, as well as Shakespeare's audience.

Shakespeare did have a flare for satire - but if we use his works as evidence, this does not emerge until the what is referred to as "the mature years' (post-Hamlet to give a general timeframe). The Shakespeare of 1592 (estimated date for publication of TGOV) was still finding his way. TGOV was his first comedy, and indebted both to the early Renaissance tradition of comedy and the Roman tradition of comedy. So to say that this play is slapstick is fitting, but to look for the deep characterization that we find in later Shakespeare is not so easy to demonstrate.

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Charles, I don't think I implied that TGOV contains deep characterization. In fact, I think the opposite is true. I think TGOV is closer to Three Stooges slapstick aimed at mocking the nobility. I don't see any other point to the play. Interestingly, the play is set in Italy, which also gives the audience the opportunity to laugh at foreigners (which probably mollified the English gentry a bit, since they could rationalize that the barbs and idiocy wasn't really directed at them).

Also interestingly, one of the early critics of Shakespeare didn't think that he actually wrote this play. I don't remember the critic's name or in which book I read it, but I'll try to dig it up and paste in the quote. It's from an 18th century critic, and it's in one of the books on Shakespeare that I downloaded off the Internet Archive site.

Authorship questions about Shakespeare (particularly surrounding the earliest and latest plays) have been going on since the late 17th century - so that does not seem surprising. However, there are far too many tropes that appear in TGOV that we see over and over in Shakespeare's high comedies: the master-servant relationship, the use of letters, partner swapping &c.

As for the play being set in Italy - quite a few of the plays are set in Italy/Rome (I think it's around 1/4 plays set in Italy/Rome). You are right in that plays were set outside of England so the playwright (in this case Shakespeare) can either mock or criticize a certain aspect of society without fear of attack form the government. The religious divide also comes into plays in certain cases. Although I find it interesting that this play is set in Verona, considering the closest source material is Spanish, It would make sense to set this play in Spain - not that there would be much of a difference. With the exception of Macbeth (and even that), the different locations are a very thin veil when it comes to Shakespeare.

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Originally Posted by Charles Darnay

Authorship questions about Shakespeare (particularly surrounding the earliest and latest plays) have been going on since the late 17th century - so that does not seem surprising. However, there are far too many tropes that appear in TGOV that we see over and over in Shakespeare's high comedies: the master-servant relationship, the use of letters, partner swapping &c.

As for the play being set in Italy - quite a few of the plays are set in Italy/Rome (I think it's around 1/4 plays set in Italy/Rome). You are right in that plays were set outside of England so the playwright (in this case Shakespeare) can either mock or criticize a certain aspect of society without fear of attack form the government. The religious divide also comes into plays in certain cases. Although I find it interesting that this play is set in Verona, considering the closest source material is Spanish, It would make sense to set this play in Spain - not that there would be much of a difference. With the exception of Macbeth (and even that), the different locations are a very thin veil when it comes to Shakespeare.

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It was Hanmer and Upton who claimed Shakespeare didn't write TGOV. In the 1899 Complete Works edited by Richard Grant White, White opens up the introduction of TGOV with this:

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Among the many unaccountable and incomprehensible blunders
of the critics of the last century, with regard to Shakespeare
and his works, was the denial by two of them, — Hanmer
and Upton — and the doubt by more, that he wrote The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
An important and often quoted passage in
the Palladis Tamia, of Francis Meres, published in 1598, mentions
this play first among the twelve which the author cites in support
of his opinion, that "Shakespeare among the English is the most
excellent in both kinds [comedy and tragedy] for the stage." But
this uncontradicted testimony, and that of Shakespeare's friends
and fellow- actors, who superintended the publication of the folio
of 1623, is hardly needed; for so unmistakably does Shakespeare's
hand appear in the play, from Valentine's first speech to his last,
that were a copy of it found without a name upon its title-page, or
a claimant in the literature or the memorandum books of its day,
it would be attributed to Shakespeare by general acclamation.
Who but he could then have written the first ten lines of it,
where Valentirie says to Proteus, —

" affection chains thy tender davs
To the sweet glances of thy honour'd love,"

and gently reproves him for living “sluggardiz'd at home," wearing
out his youth "in shapeless idleness"? There has been but
one man in the world whose daring fancies were so fraught with
meaning. Who but he could have created Launce or Launce's
dog? Indeed, it is safe to say that, however inferior it may be to
the productions of his maturer years, even The Tempest and King
Lear are not more unmistakably Shakespearian in character than
The Two Gentlemen of Verona.

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Claiming that Shakespeare was not the author does seem baseless, especially since TGOV was included in the 1623 Folio. I think a more defensible argument would be that Shakespeare might have been a minor collaborator (I'm saying that that argument would be *more* defensible, not eminently defensible!). If the Shakespearian scholars are correct that this was one of his earliest works, then wouldn't it be normal that he (as one of the rookies) would not get the lion's share of the words? But then again, TGOV is in the 1623 Folio.

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Originally Posted by Charles Darnay

I think you have a few misguided points about the nobility of the late 16th century, as well as Shakespeare's audience.

Shakespeare did have a flare for satire - but if we use his works as evidence, this does not emerge until the what is referred to as "the mature years' (post-Hamlet to give a general timeframe). The Shakespeare of 1592 (estimated date for publication of TGOV) was still finding his way. TGOV was his first comedy, and indebted both to the early Renaissance tradition of comedy and the Roman tradition of comedy. So to say that this play is slapstick is fitting, but to look for the deep characterization that we find in later Shakespeare is not so easy to demonstrate.

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Of course, Charles. Good point. Let's add that Shakespeare was a Venetian and he did not mock the nobility but rather tried to redeem it:
Those who have power to hurt
but will do none
they rightly do inherit heaven's graces
and husband nature's riches from expense
they are the lords and stewards of their faces...

To think that Shakespeare was adressing the lower classes is ridiculous.

There was a very long and tedious treatise claiming that Shakespeare was in fact Italian. It all boiled down to "well, a lot of his plays are set in Italy." I regretted wasting my time with that one.

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Originally Posted by EdHenFab

Claiming that Shakespeare was not the author does seem baseless, especially since TGOV was included in the 1623 Folio. I think a more defensible argument would be that Shakespeare might have been a minor collaborator (I'm saying that that argument would be *more* defensible, not eminently defensible!). If the Shakespearian scholars are correct that this was one of his earliest works, then wouldn't it be normal that he (as one of the rookies) would not get the lion's share of the words? But then again, TGOV is in the 1623 Folio.

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Maybe, but collaborative works during the period tend to have a certain character to them because of the way collaboration was done. Usually the play would be cut up and each scene written by a different author, this leads to characteristic plot holes and disjointed characterization in collaborative plays from the period. Fletcher's contributions to late Shakespeare collaborations are relatively easy to identify, so if TGOV was a collaborative work we would expect to see some of the hallmarks of the process in it, and some element of another authors style.

I think we try too hard sometimes to find excuses for Shakespeare when he falls short of our expectations, TGOV is just a relatively humdrum play.

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Originally Posted by OrphanPip

Maybe, but collaborative works during the period tend to have a certain character to them because of the way collaboration was done. Usually the play would be cut up and each scene written by a different author, this leads to characteristic plot holes and disjointed characterization in collaborative plays from the period. Fletcher's contributions to late Shakespeare collaborations are relatively easy to identify, so if TGOV was a collaborative work we would expect to see some of the hallmarks of the process in it, and some element of another authors style.

I think we try too hard sometimes to find excuses for Shakespeare when he falls short of our expectations, TGOV is just a relatively humdrum play.

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I think TGOV is a good play, because I believe it was never intended to be anything more than a slapstick farce, and in that I think it succeeded.

Yet there is language in the play that is stellar. Act III, Scene 1 for example, Valentine's lamentful riff about being banished by the Duke. If someone other than Shakespeare wrote that, then I'd sure like to know who it was, and read his works as well.

There seems to be a consensus that TGOV is what it is because of Shakespeare's immaturity as a writer. Is writing so capricious an art that on one page you can pen pearls, and on the next turds? I don't think so. But if there's a consensus that plays were collaborated, then why not allow TGOV to be one such? And if TGOV was collaborated, why not allow that most of the unspectacular lines were written by one other than Shakespeare? Not to lionize Shakespeare, but to get at the most plausible explanation for the play's overall mediocrity in language. Is it mediocre because the theme only allowed for sporadic heights, is it because Shakespeare had only a minor role in its creation, is it because Shakespeare was immature? A combination of these? Who knows? But I'm not comfortable with ascribing the mediocrity to Shakespeare's immaturity, not when there are scenes like Valentine's riff in the play.

I don't think the mediocrity is in the writing but in the plot, which couldn't be the result of collaboration. But the plot has so many tropes of later Shakespeare (including the cross dressing girl and the outlaws - both crop up in As You Like It and the two guys in love with one girl in Midsummer's Night's Dream).

Shakespeare must had been commercialized, forced to write plays that attract an suit the taste of folk's public... I guess.

I don't think he was forced. And he wasn't commercialised - he was writing commercially as part of his job in any case. He was a member of an acting company. They needed to put on new plays. He found he was good as a script writer. The company and the public liked what he wrote (and doubtless the actors made lots of suggestions) and he got on and wrote.

Incidentally, Two Gentlemen has a feature which is very common in the Comedies of two contrasting juvenile female roles, Julia and Silvia here. There also Kate/Bianca, Beatrice/Hero, Helena/Hermia, Rosalind/Celia, Portia/Nerissa, Adriana/Luciana in Comedy of Errors. It looks as though there were two boy actors contrasting physically, although as those plays cover a ten year period, presumably the boys at the start would have grown up and been replaced.

And Two Gents rather puts paid to the "Shakespeare knew Italy well" fallacy. They travel from (landlocked) Verona to (landlocked) Milan by BOAT?

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Originally Posted by Jackson Richardson

And Two Gents rather puts paid to the "Shakespeare knew Italy well" fallacy. They travel from (landlocked) Verona to (landlocked) Milan by BOAT?

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THANK YOU! I often wondered at the fools who claim someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare due to the supposed knowledge of Italy in the plays. I looked at a map. Verona, landlocked, check. Milan, landlocked, check. No river, lake, stream, or any other waterway between them, CHECK! Getting from one to the other by means of water: impossible. Shakespeare knew Italy about as well as I do, which is to say, not much.