The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Very good

I liked it very much awsome book at low cost

I was drawn to this play after watching “Shakespeare in Love.” Early in the movie lines are recited from the play that are quite entrancing: “What is light, if Silvia be not seen? // What is joy, if Silvia be not by? // Unless it be to think that she is by // And feed upon the shadow of perfection. // Except I be by Silvia in the night, // There is no music in the nightingale; // Unless I look upon Silvia in the day, // There is no day for me to look upon.” Alas, these words from Act III, and the song in Act IV, (“Who is Silvia? What is she, // That all our swains commend her?”) are the highlights of a play that most critics place at or near the bottom of the Shakespeare canon. The play is a comedy and therefore a love story, but the focus is on the friendship of two men--two buddies as it were--as in the plot of a Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie. Also, the heroine is not Silvia but Julia. The buddies are “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”—Proteus and Valentine. Proteus loves Julia and she loves him, while Valentine is destined to fall in love with Silvia. This being a comedy, Proteus falls for Silvia too, and Julia must disguise herself as a boy to win him back. If you’re familiar with Shakespeare’s comedies, girls disguised as boys is often part of the plot, but it was with this play where cross-dressing began. Valentine goes to Milan to be “tutor’d in the world.” Soon after, Proteus follows to meet up with him in the court of Milan. There, Proteus forgets about his love for Julia and falls head-over-heels in love with Valentine’s girl Silvia, and to entice her affections proceeds to disparage his best friend. Nice guy, huh? This betrayal leads to Valentine’s exile from the court. Determined to win him back, Julia dresses as a boy and sets off to find him. The plucky and fetching Julia; the wit of Launce, the clown, and his dog Crab can’t save the plot’s absurd and implausible twist wherein Valentine offers the love of his life (Silvia) to Proteus, just after Proteus was about to rape her. How’s that for friendship? And how’s that for love? Valentine doesn’t bother to ask Silvia how she feels about being offered up to his friend as so much chattel, never mind that she would have been raped had not Valentine and Julia arrived in the nick of time. As you might expect, “Two Gentlemen of Verona” is among the bard’s “problem comedies,” and is not performed all that often. In the introduction to the Pelican Shakespeare, Mary Beth Rose of the University of Illinois at Chicago sums up the play with: “In the ‘shallow story of deep love’ (I.I. 21), about which Valentine taunts Proteus at the beginning of ‘The Two Gentlemen of Verona,’ the actual ‘deep love’ is that between male friends.” Indeed. She also cites the plays “exquisite lyricism” as the play’s saving grace.

Exactly as described, fast delivery. Much loved gift.

This book is the best thing for plays! I also read WSh Prince Henry the IV and it was great!👍😁👀 You really should read them.You can get them on your audio and Amblesidonline!

I bought this to read prior to seeing a production of the play. Although I own a one volume complete works, the Pelican books are much easier to read; small, but not too small, easy to carry around if desired. The footnotes are mostly helpful but they are kept to a reasonable number. The several brief prefatory essays (30 pages total) are helpful and interesting, without being tediously scholarly. As to the play itself, it's certainly not one of Shakespeare's best. But the performance we saw made the best of its silliness. Perhaps it's telling that the "character" getting the most laughs was Launce's dog.

The matching of old and modern English on each page was great. It allowed rapid understanding of the text and explanations of terms and phrases whose meanings otherwise would have remained wild guesses.