The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Key Text: William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, first printed in the 1623 Folio edition of Shakespeare’s works (STC 22273).

Several scholars believe William Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona lacks the technical skills of the playwright’s later works, and thus might represent an early exploration of themes that Shakespeare perfected as his career progressed. However, I think that what many people see as flaws are rather intentional additions made visible when the play is read through the lens of the history of emotion. Namely, the actions and motivations of characters in the play make narrative sense when read in alignment with early modern emotional communities and corresponding 'intimate scripts’, a term which medievalist Sarah McNamer has introduced to describe the methods by which historical language expresses emotion; ‘they are quite literally scripts for the performance of feeling’, she writes, ‘scripts that often explicitly aspire to performative efficacy’ (McNamer, 12). In this post, I argue that focus on the representation of the emotional scripts of male friendship allows for a reading of the play which highlights the tension between homosocial humanist friendship and the narrative of the comic plot. This tension makes this undervalued play a ‘key text’ in the Shakespearean canon.

In her important 2006 monograph, the medieval historian Barbara Rosenwein defines ‘emotional communities’ as ‘groups in which people adhere to the same norms of emotional expression and value – or devalue – the same related emotions’ (Rosenwein, 2). The two Veronese gentlemen of Shakespeare’s play’s title, Proteus and Valentine, are part of the same emotional community because of a number of factors: they are both men, the same age, and they grew up and were educated together, giving them the same cultural and emotional touchstones. Throughout the play, their interactions draw upon generic examples of male friendship from stories and conduct guides taught in the grammar schools of Tudor England.

In early modern England, ideal conduct was presented to boys from a young age through a combination of guidebooks, philosophical texts, and fictional stories which were used to present examples of idealized masculine conduct. One of the most popular stories about male friendship in the early modern consciousness was that of Titus and Gisippus. Originally from Boccaccio’s Decameron, it was retold over and over throughout the early modern period. Sir Thomas Elyot’s 1531 retelling, for example, explicitly introduces the story as an example of idealised friendship, saying that it ‘fully declared the figure of perfect amitie’ (Elyot, 166). Indeed, Elyot believed that readers would learn from his text the means to enact the idealized friendship modelled by Titus and Gisippus; ‘I will reherce a right goodly example of friendship’, he writes, ‘[w]hich example…studiousely radde, shall minister to the redars singular pleasure and also incredible comforte to practise amitie’ (166).

Thomas Elyot, The boke named the Gouernour deuised by sir Thomas Elyot knyght, Sixth Edition (London: Thomas Marsh 1557).

The beginning of Proteus and Valentine’s story in The Two Gentlemen of Verona would have been recognisable to early modern audiences familiar with Titus and Gisippus. The narrative immediately places it within a tradition of similar stories about male friendship. Valentine begins the play asking Proteus to travel with him, ‘I…would entreat thy company to see the wonders of the world abroad’ (1.1.5-6). Proteus responds with terms of love and endearment, ‘wilt thou be gone? Sweet Valentine, adieu’ (1.1.11-12). Proteus hopes that Valentine will think of him whether his travels are safe (‘wish me partaker in thy happiness when thou dost meet good hap’) or dangerous: ‘and in thy danger…commend thy grievance to my holy prayers’ (1.1.15-17). Here, I argue, friendship functions as a kind of emotional community because it is based around similarities in the characters’ lives and experiences that have led them to value the same kinds of emotions. Shakespeare, I suggest, appears to deliberate draw upon existing narratives of friendship and, by doing so, employs an intimate script particular to a humanist emotional community.

Proteus: "All happiness bechance to thee in Milan!". Valentine: "As much to you at home! and so, farewell".

Walter Crane. 19th Century. Folger Shakespeare Library. LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection.

The emotional communities of male friendship depicted by Shakespeare in The Two Gentlemen of Verona were enacted in the early modern period through the use of specific intimate scripts, which determined appropriate emotions. This regulation of expression affected the methods for emotional expression available to men in early modern England and, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, these regulations find artistic expression. I suggest that Proteus and Valentine interact using humanist intimate scripts which place them within preexisting early modern traditions of idealised friendship. This tradition functions here as an emotional community.

The ending of The Two Gentlemen of Verona has long been a source of scholarly confusion. Proteus’ threat of violence towards Silvia, a woman he claims to love, and Valentine’s nonsensically quick reversal of his anger towards Proteus for lying to him, banishing him, and threatening Silvia, seem out of place in a comedic narrative. Indeed, Valentine’s anger at Proteus appears not to be based on any single specific action committed by Proteus, but rather entirely around Proteus’s more abstract failure as a friend; ‘thou common friend, that’s without faith or love, for such is a friend now!...I dare not say I have one friend alive’ (5.4.62-3). The moment Proteus apologizes, Valentine forvies him; ‘then I am paid, and once again I do receive thee honest’ (5.4.66-76; 83-4). As confusing as Proteus and Valentine’s seemingly abrupt changes of heart appear, however, they make sense when we recognise that they are based in an idealised form of male friendship that structures their emotional community. They prioritise each other above their heterosexual desire for the women they claim to love, and this, too, is in line with the intimate scripts of their community.

While the play ends with two proposed marriages, neither are happy ones. There is very clearly more joy over the reconciliation between the two male friends than between the two couples who are to be married. As the play ends, Valentine refers to both marriages collectively as one wedding, describing how ‘our day of marriage shall be yours, one feast, one house, one mutual happiness’ (5.4.166-9). Throughout the play, Proteus and Valentine’s use of humanist emotional scripts causes them to prioritize their relationship with each other, even as they pursue heterosexual romance. This leads to an ending in which the reunion between the two friends is given far more emotional and narrative weight than either of their marriages and I suggest that, perhaps, the real marriage ending in this comedy is that between Proteus and Valentine.

While the characters and plot of The Two Gentlemen of Verona might at first glance seem to be earlier, less established versions of those in Shakespeare’s later works, when seen through the critical lens of the history of emotion, these confusing elements can instead be seen as references which situate the characters within humanist emotional communities. These references would have carried clear implications for early modern audiences familiar with the grammar school and its teachings.  I believe that Shakespeare’s play is a critical representation of an unthinking application of a particular emotional script and demonstrates theatre’s capacity to interrogate early modern society, quite unrelated to the play’s “goodnesss” or “badness” as a work of art. With this in mind, I suggest that The Two Gentlemen of Verona deserves a place alongside Shakespeare’s other, better known works as a ‘key text’.

Anna Quercia-Thomas is a PhD Candidate at the University of Western Australia.

Selected Bibliography.

Rosenwein, Barbara H. Emotional communities in the early Middle Ages. (London: Cornell University Press, 2006)

Elyot, Thomas. The boke named The governour, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot, knight. (London: J.M. Dent & co., 1907)

Shakespeare, William. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. William C Carroll. (London: Arden Shakespeare, 2004)

McNamer, Sarah. Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion. (Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009)

3 October 2023.