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Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations

Two Gentlemen of Verona

by Thomas Amherst Perry

Type of plot: Comedy

Time of plot: Sixteenth century

Locale: Italy

First performed: ca. 1594–95; first published, 1623

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Valentine and

Proteus, two young gentlemen

Julia, the beloved of Proteus

Silvia, the beloved of Valentine

Thurio, a man in love with Silvia

The Duke of Milan, Silvia’s father

Speed, Valentine’s servant

Lucetta, Julia’s servant

THE STORY

Valentine and Proteus, two longtime friends, disagreed heartily on whether, as Valentine thought, the most important thing in life was to travel and learn the wonders of the world, or whether Proteus was right in believing nothing to be more important than love. The two friends parted for a time when Valentine traveled to Milan, to seek advancement and honor in the palace of the duke. He pleaded with Proteus to join him in the venture, but Proteus was too much in love with Julia to leave her side for even a short time. Julia was a noble and pure young girl, who had had many suitors. Proteus had at last won her heart and the two were happy in their love.

Valentine journeyed to Milan, and there he learned that his friend was right about the importance of love. For Valentine met the duke’s daughter, Silvia, and fell instantly in love with her. Silvia returned his love, but her father wanted her to marry Thurio, a foolish man with no personal charms but much land and gold. Valentine longed for Silvia but saw no chance of persuading her father to consent to his suit. Then he learned that Proteus, whose father was ignorant of Proteus’s love affair and wished his son to educate himself by travel, was soon to arrive in Milan.

The two friends had a joyful reunion, and Valentine proudly presented his friend to Silvia. To Proteus he praised the virtue and beauty of his beloved, and when they were alone, Valentine confided to Proteus that, since Sylvia’s father refused to give her to anyone but Thurio, he planned to fashion a rope ladder and steal Silvia from her room and marry her. Valentine, asking his friend to help him in his plan, was too absorbed to notice that Proteus remained strangely silent. The truth was that Proteus, at the first sight of Silvia, had forgotten his solemn vows to Julia (sealed before he left her with the exchange of rings), had forgotten too his oath of friendship with Valentine, and that he was determined to have Silvia for his own. With protestations of self-hatred for betraying his friend, Proteus told the duke of Valentine’s plan to escape with Silvia from the palace. The duke, forewarned, tricked Valentine into revealing the plot and banished him from Milan on penalty of his life.

While these events were taking place, Julia, thinking that Proteus still loved her and grieving over his absence, disguised herself as a page and traveled to Milan to see her love. She was on her way to Milan when Valentine was forced to leave that city. Valentine, not knowing that his onetime friend had betrayed him, believed Proteus’s promise that he would carry letters back and forth between him and Silvia.

With Valentine out of the way, Proteus proceeded to get rid of Thurio as a rival. Thurio, foolish and gullible, was an easy man to trick. One night, Proteus and Thurio went to Silvia’s window to serenade her in Thurio’s name, but Proteus used the occasion to sing to her and make protestations of his love for her. Julia, in the disguise of a page, stood in the shadows and heard his betrayal of her, as well as Silvia’s response that she would love no one but Valentine. She also accused him of playing false with Julia, for Valentine had told her of his friend’s betrothal.

Calling herself Sebastian, Julia, still in the dress of a page, became employed by Proteus to carry messages to Silvia. One day, he gave her the ring that Julia herself had given him and told her to deliver it to Silvia. When Silvia refused the ring and sent it back to Proteus, Julia loved her rival and blessed her.

Valentine, in the meantime, had been captured by outlaws, once honorable men who had been banished for petty crimes and had taken refuge in the woods near Mantua. To save his life, Valentine had joined the band and soon became their leader. A short time later, Silvia, hoping to find Valentine, escaped from the palace and, with the help of an agent, arrived at an abbey near Milan. There she was captured by the outlaws. When her father heard of her flight, he took Thurio and Proteus to the abbey to look for her. Julia followed them. Proteus, arriving on the scene first, rescued her from the outlaws before they were able to take her to their leader. Again Proteus proclaimed his love for her. When she scornfully berated him, he seized her and tried to force himself on her. Valentine, who had overheard everything, sprang upon Proteus and pulled him away from her.

Valentine was more hurt by his friend’s duplicity than by anything else, but such was his forgiving nature that when Proteus confessed his guilt and his shame over his betrayal, Valentine forgave him and received him again as his friend. In proof of his friendship, he was even prepared to give up his claim on Silvia. When she heard that, Julia, still disguised, fainted. Reviving, she pretended to hand over to Silvia the ring Proteus had ordered her to deliver, but instead she offered the ring Proteus had given her when they parted in Verona. Then Julia was recognized by all, and Proteus admitted that he still loved her.

The outlaws appeared with the duke and Thurio, whom they had captured in the forest. Thurio gave up all claim to Silvia, for he thought a girl who would run off into the woods to pursue another man much too foolish for him to marry. Her father, convinced at last of Valentine’s worth, gave that young man permission to marry Silvia. During the general rejoicing Valentine begged one more boon. He asked the duke to pardon the outlaws, all brave men who would serve the duke faithfully if he would return them from exile. The duke granted the boon, and the whole party made its way back to Milan. There the two happy couples intended to share their wedding day and be happy in their mutual love and friendship.

CRITICAL EVALUATION

In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, William Shakespeare is learning the craft of playwriting, with plot elements, characters, and comic situations that will reappear in later plays. The work also mirrors the literary vogues of its time, particularly the popular prose romances of the day—forerunners of the later sentimental novel and the twentieth century psychological novel—that race the turbulences of adolescence and youth. Some of Shakespeare’s later comedies and his Romeo and Juliet (ca. 1595–96) reflect a similar concern. Himself then the father of a daughter approaching her teens, Shakespeare may have been especially sensitive to the problems of youth.

Proteus and Valentine are Italianates—young gentlemen sent abroad to acquire perfection at a foreign court. Proteus’s name, a common Elizabethan label for the Italianate, further establishes that identification. Critics have made much of the geographical “inaccuracy” of Valentine’s departure for Milan by boat, ignoring the fact that Shakespeare was too well read and too familiar with the geography of Europe not to know that travel from the real Verona to Milan would have had to have been by land. As in his other plays, Shakespeare uses place names for their connotations. Verona was the home of the lovers Romeo and Juliet, Milan the fashion center of Europe and the seat of the imperial court. With this Verona and this Milan he could retain the three worlds of his source, Jorge de Montemayor’s prose romance Diana (ca. 1559): the world of lovers subject to parental oversight, the sophisticated world of the court, and the green world of the forest.

In the first world, Proteus, like Felis in Diana and Euphues in John Lyly’s romance Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit (1578–80), goes through the wild emotional swings and naïve tentativeness of adolescence, and he submits tamely to his elders. He is in love with love and has an idealized vision of the court, where he hopes to achieve perfection.

In the second world, the world of the court, Proteus is metamorphosed by self-interest and begins to assume poses. His desire for Valentine’s Silvia leads him first to disloyalty to both his friend and Julia and eventually to outright treachery. At the end, rejected by Silvia after his final pose as a knight errant who has rescued her from outlaws, Proteus tries to take Silvia by force. Even the more stable Valentine changes at court, becoming adept at exaggerated expression; perfection for him becomes a matter of rhetorical skill—“A man is no man if with his tongue he cannot win a woman”—and a proficiency in conventional formulas and flattery.

Some critics have found fault with the way the play ends in the last of these worlds, the green world. Here, outlaws are readily pardoned, Proteus is forgiven his assault on Silvia, and Valentine temporarily resigns his claim on his beloved in favor of Proteus. Though Proteus’s repentance seems sudden, it is plausible because it is preceded by the shock he received when his villainy was publicly exposed and he recognized his self-deception. With this recognition, the idealized picture of perfection that the Verona youth had envisioned for himself—hearing sweet discourse, conversing with noblemen, and being in the eye of every exercise worthy of a nobleman—suddenly gives way to the truth. The court produced this villain, and “shame and guilt confound him.” Proteus recognizes not only his own imperfection but that of all humankind: “were man but constant, he were perfect.”

To Valentine and the duke also comes discovery. The duke discovers the true nature of his favorite, Thurio, and of the despised “peasant” Valentine, and he learns to look at Valentine with new eyes and to consider him worthy of his daughter’s love. He sees the outlaws as reformed men. The corrupting influence of the court has dissolved in the healing of the green forest. Even Julia, who dreamed of idealized love at the beginning of the play and then at court learned of the flaws in her beloved Proteus, discovers that she can still love him. Valentine, though he at first reacted with rage, feels the rekindling of his old feelings of friendship. The play thus ends with the regeneration of the protagonists, a conclusion required if the play is to remain faithful to the traditional endings of the prose romances that served as sources for the play.

Shakespeare does not go into much depth in portraying the characters in this play. In fact, some critics have suspected him of writing The Two Gentlemen of Verona primarily to mock the idealistic Renaissance romantic codes. It is more likely, however, that he is watching his characters with sympathetic amusement. When Valentine is smitten with Silvia and confides his feelings to Speed, Speed mocks his impassioned behavior and comments, as Silvia enters, that he is now about to witness a puppet show. Even Silvia joins in the mockery, though more gently, when she stops Valentine’s exaggerated praise and Petrarchan conventions with “I guess the sequel.” Proteus’s sentimental gift of a little dog, “Jewel,” which Launce loses and replaces with the mongrel “Crab,” is transformed from a gallant gesture into farce when the dog runs under the duke’s table and lifts his leg against Silvia’s farthingale. Just after Proteus’s tender farewell to Julia, Launce parodies lovers’ partings with his dog sitting in for the loved one; when Valentine laments his banishment from Silvia, Launce mimics a lover’s Petrarchan cataloging of his mistress’ physical attributes.

—Thomas Amherst Perry

FILM ADAPTATIONS

1983–84 BBC Shakespeare Production

Directed by Don Taylor, this production starred Tessa Peake-Jones as Julia; Tony Haygarth as Launce; Hetta Charnley as Lucetta; Tyler Butterworth as Proteus; Joanne Pearce as Silvia; Nicholas Kaby as Speed; and John Hudson as Valentine.

Henry Fenwick, in his essay on “The Production” (19–29) for the booklet the BBC published when this version was first broadcast said the director, Don Taylor, genuinely wanted to direct the play (19); quoted him citing academic disparagement of this work; said he admitted to having to fix a few minor errors in the text; and said that Taylor admires its clever structure, even if it is not as great a comedy as some of Shakespeare’s later works (20). Fenwick reported that Taylor conceded that the opening scenes may be hard for a modern audience to understand, partly because of an English craze in the 1580s for Italian culture (21–22). He noted that Taylor thought the play may have been written with a private performance in mind (22) and he observed that it echoes Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” and how it emphasizes popular comedy (23). Fenwick said that Shaun Sutton, the producer, thought The Two Gentlemen of Verona might appeal to adolescents for various reasons, which is one reason the lovers here are played by young actors (23). Fenwick noted that Taylor invented a “Garden of Courtly Love” to help make all the witty exchanges clearer and to highlight their artificiality (25). The play’s designer said he was inspired by such artists as Botticelli and Fra Angelico, while Taylor explained his preference for shooting long takes with their “dangerous element of [extended] performance” (26). Taylor apparently filmed each scene without stopping and sometimes in sequence (27). He used genuine music from this era, used a lot of it, and used original instruments as well (27–28). He explained that he treated the abrupt final scene as typical of much writing produced before psychological realism arose (28–29).

J. C. Bulman and H. R. Coursen, in their 1988 Shakespeare on Television critical anthology, quoted from several early reviews. One, in London’s Times Literary Supplement, praised the appearance of Joanne Pearce but thought that Tessa Peake-Jones was imprisoned in a sentimental performance. Another assessment, in an academic journal, admired the lighting, the color, the music, and the performances of both lead actresses. A review in the Shakespeare Quarterly liked the way the Court of Love was used to make sense of the young men’s ostentatious behavior. Harry Keyishian, in a review for the Shakespeare on Film newsletter, praised the use of the “two-shot (two heads in the ‘frame’ conversing),” saying it enhanced “intimacy of expression” and made “formal declamation … absurd,” thus “increasing audience involvement.” He thought this play, because it contains so much dialog, “lends itself especially well to the use of the close-up and the two-shot and, not surprisingly, very effective use is made of these shots,” with the “comic dialogues of Launce and Speed … given special vitality and charm on the small screen.” Keyishian commended Director Don Taylor for “employ[ing] a full range of other television techniques to give life to the production. Adroit camera placement, mobile framing, arresting composition, and other devices were used to good effect.” But Keyishian also suggested that this production helped offer new ways of understanding the play, writing that the “intimacies made possible by close-ups also permitted effective interpretive subtexts.” In a “‘straight’ reading of the play, the Duke of Verona seems sincere in wishing to marry his daughter off to the foolish Thurio. This production asks us,” however, “to understand, on the contrary, that the Duke actually views Thurio with distaste. He seems to be testing the faithfulness of Valentine and Silvia by placing barriers in their path, even as he is exposing Proteus by, in effect, tempting him with opportunities for treachery.” He cited another example: “when Proteus pretends to be reluctant to dispraise Valentine to Silvia in 3.2, the Duke conveys (to the audience) tremendous contempt for his hypocrisy. The last line of the scene, ‘Even now about it! I will pardon you,’ is divided, in delivery, so that the first part is a dismissal of Proteus and Thurio to set about their work, while the second, spoken after they are gone, is a condemnation of Proteus—saying, in effect, ‘a rogue like you certainly needs my pardon.’” Keyishian then commended the ways various actors played their parts (6), with the generally positive reviews cited above making it seem all the odder that this production has not received more scholarly attention.

Peter Cochran, in his 2013 book Small-Screen Shakespeare, called this adaptation “very good”; admired the acting and the music; noted an emphasis on charm; but faulted the set and lighting. He wrote that the dog is hilariously expressionless; enjoyed the rope ladder scene; thought any early defects disappear later on; admired the complexity of Proteus (81); and found the production as a whole quite satisfying (82).

Bibliography

1 

Bulman, J. C., and H. R. Coursen, editors. Shakespeare on Television: An Anthology of Essays and Reviews. UP of New England, 1988.

2 

Cochran, Peter. Small-Screen Shakespeare. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

3 

Keyishian, Harry. “The Shakespeare Plays on TV: Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Shakespeare on Film Newsletter, vol. 9, no. 1, 1984, p. 6.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Perry, Thomas Amherst. "Two Gentlemen Of Verona." Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations, edited by Robert C. Evans, Salem Press, 2025. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=CSSF_0042.
APA 7th
Perry, T. A. (2025). Two Gentlemen of Verona. In R. C. Evans (Ed.), Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Perry, Thomas Amherst. "Two Gentlemen Of Verona." Edited by Robert C. Evans. Critical Survey of Shakespeare: Film Adaptations. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2025. Accessed December 08, 2025. online.salempress.com.