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Part II Roman 16 The Two Gentlemen Of Verona

Of Shakespeare's early comedies, The Two Gentleettable It is so weak, in fact, that some critics think it may have been written as early as 1590 or else that the versionhave is a led copy of the real play

Shakespeare may have used as his source material for the play an unfinished roal-born poet, Jorge de Monteestion is that the rolish until 1598, some four years after The Two Gentleht speculate that Shakespeare saw the English translation in manuscript or that he saw the French translation, which had appeared in 1578

Verona, where the play opens, is a city in north-central Italy It is a favorite setting for Renaissance co of the Shrew as the hoe I-451) It is also the hoonists in this play

young Leander

The play opens with the two gentlemen of Verona on the scene They are Valentine and Proteus The latter nay, Proteus was an infinitely changeable sea deity (see page II-655), and eable character of the Proteusmeet

Valentine and Proteus, it see off on his travels, for in Shakespeare's time, a period of travel in youth was considered an essential part of the education of a young man

Proteus, however, prefers to re lady and will not leave her Valentine teases Proteus, saying that the latter is so lovesick that even in praying, he will do so

on some shallow story of deep love:

How young Leander crossed the Hellespont

- Act I, scene i, lines 21-22

The Hellespont (better known today as the Dardanelles) is a narrow strait, about fortyTurkey and Greece, and it for the Black Sea with the Mediterranean At its narrowest it is only three fourths of a mile wide On the European side in ancient tiirl, Hero, served as priestess of Aphrodite, according to a tale that was told in antiquity and that has never lost its popularity On the Asian side, in the Greek city of Abydos, lived a handsome youth named Leander

Hero and Leander met at a festival and fell instantly in love Thereafter, every night Leander swaht she placed in herOne storht was blown out and Leander lost his way and was drowned When his dead body ashed ashore, the grief-stricken Hero plunged into the waters to her own death

The tale is a favorite of Shakespeare's He mentions it several times

To Milan

But ValentineValentine says:

Once more adieu!

My father at the road

Expects , there to see me shipped

- Act I, scene i, lines 53-54

Verona isn't a seaport, to be sure It is sixty-five miles from the sea Perhaps Valentine means to travel overland to Venice and take ship there; or to travel to the sea by way of the Adige River, on which Verona is located That depends, of course, on where he is going, and he tells us quickly, for he says to Proteus:

To Milan let me hear from thee by letters

Of thy success in love

- Act I, scene i, lines 57-58

But Milan is not a seaport either (it is seventy-five miles north of Genoa) and cannot be reached directly by sea One has the vision of Valentine traveling sixty-fiveship all around Italy to Genoa, a voyage of about one thousand four hundredseventy-five miles overland to Milan

This is scarcely necessary, since in actual fact Milan is only ninety miles due west of Verona over undoubtedly well-traveled roads One can argue, of course, that there ays of traveling from Verona to Milan by inland ays, but it is muchhis geography Nor need he have really The audience wouldn't care and the actual cities have nothing to do with the story It ht just as well have been London and Ae between

Attends the Emperor

With Valentine gone, Proteus turns his attention to his love for Julia, who, it quickly turns out, returns his love fully and is coy only out of n too, to make herself more dearly valued)

And yet Proteus' stay in Verona does not entirely please his father, Antonio, ants his son educated too He discusses the matter with Pan-thino, who is listed as his servant in the cast of characters, and Panthino is all in favor of sending Proteus on his travels He says:

/ think your lordship is not ignorant

How his companion, youthful Valentine,

Attends the Emperor in his royal court

- Act I, scene iii, lines 25-27

Through the most famous part of its history, in the fifteenth century, Milan was an independent duchy and the Duke of Milan was one of the best-known princes in Italy There were two famous lines of these dukes, Visconti and Sforza, and indeed it is the Duke of Milan (unnamed) who is an important character in the play Why, then, this reference to the Em-seror?

To be sure, Milan had an imperial past In the fourth century it, rather than Rome, was the place of residence of the Roman emperors in the West, and it was from Milan, for instance, that the Ro official toleration of Christianity in 313

More likely to have influenced Shakespeare's thinking, however, was the fact that in 1535 Milan lost its independence and beca doe II-747) Shakespeare hly that he spoke of the Emperor when he meant to refer to the situation as it had been a century earlier and speak of the Duke (Or else the terled copy of the original play on which alone our present version is based)

And so, impressed by Valentine's success at the court of Milan, Antonio decides to send his son, Proteus, there too, and Proteus, to his chagrin [for he has just learned of Julia's love for hio

Now begin the complications In Milan Valentine has fallen deeply in love with Silvia, the daughter of the Duke of Milan She is presented as a paragon of beauty and virtue Also in love with her is Thurio, much inferior to Valentine in looks and character, but who the Duke has destined to be her husband As for Silvia, there is soon no doubt it is Valentine she loves

Into this triangle comes Proteus, who has taken an es with her as tokens of love As soon as Proteus ht to his na in love with Silvia on the instant, forgetting his Julia, and at once planning to betray his friend

Valentine intends to use a rope ladder to get to Silvia'sand lope with her He confides this to Proteus, who promptly passes the information on to the Duke The Duke therefore confronts Valentine, who is on his way to the elopee, the Duke banishes Valentine fro the field that much clearer for the perfidious Proteus

with a codpiece

Meanwhile, Julia, left behind in Verona by Proteus, can endure her loneliness no longer She determines to travel to Milan to see hiht coe such as that, she decides to dress like a man

This is a convention used by Shakespeare in several of his plays (though first, chronologically, in this one), and to us it carries no conviction at all The audience is invariably a a feains but a poor notion of the hero's powers of observation However, a convention is a convention (like the one in the in a love duet, the sound of an orchestra appears out of nowhere) Besides, in Shakespeare's time female parts were played by boys, and to have a boy-Julia dress up like a irl-Julia do so In fact, it hen the boy-Julia was playing Julia as a girl that he

In this play, at any rate, Shakespeare doesto switch outward appearances Julia's maid, Lu-cetta, who disapproves of her mistress' plan, asks coldly how to make the breeches, and when Julia tells her to make them any way she pleases, Lu-cetta answers:

You must needs have them with a codpiece, madam,

- Act II, scene vii, line 53

A codpiece was a baglike affair, covering the opening in the front of the breeches It was, in effect, a container for the penis and was quite fashionable in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries There was a tendency to fill it out with stuffing of one sort or another, partly as protection, and partly to an seem more prominent than it was (much in the way that ladies' brassieres are taht also be decorated or prinked out for the same purpose

Naturally, the maidenly Julia is shocked at the mention of the object, but Lucetta says:

A round hose, madam, now's not worth a pin,

Unless you have a codpiece to stick pins on

- Act II, scene vii, lines 55-56