The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Oxford Shakespeare Series) Book

Early in Two Gentlemen of Verona, a character refers to a "shallow tale of deep love," but the play he himself inhabits is something worse, at least where the affection of these two gentlemen are concerned: it is a shallow tale of shallow love.

Proteus shifts his love from one woman to another as quickly as he changes cities, and Valentine is prepared to give up the woman he loves to his friend Proteus, a person who has betrayed his trust and threatened his beloved with rape, all because Proteus tenders a perfunctory apology only after he is caught in the act.

Through all of this, the gentlewomen Julia and Sylvia persist in loving their unworthy men with surprisingly little protest. These four well-born characters are so poorly developed--little more than sketches, really--that their shallowness and odd behavior seem more the fault of poor dramaturgy than a commentary on upper-class manners and morals. (Some critics think this play may be Shakespeare's first effort, and I am inclined to think they may be right.)

And yet . . . and yet . . . there's a lot here to like if you're a fan of Shakespearean comedy. All the elements of the classic Shakespearean comic romance are here: topsy-turvy loves, a girl dressed as a boy, comic suitors, a lovely song, a fairy tale forest inhabited by unusual beings (in this case a bunch of Robin Hood types) where surprising things happen, and a pat (perhaps too pat) happy ending. And then, of course, there are the clowns.

Launce, the principal clown of Two Gentlemen of Verona is the best thing in the play. He is so sweet toward his dog Crab and so practical in his views on the choice of a mate that he puts all the upper-class characters to shame. He lingers in our memory long after the two shallow gentlemen of Verona and their unfortunate loves have departed. And--even though this is an early play--I cannot keep from harboring the suspicion that Launce was created to do exactly this: to place the "gentlemen" of the title in ironic quotations and reveal Proteus and Valentine for the empty suits they are.