INTRODUCTION TO TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. WE E have no copy of this light and graceful comedy of an earlier date than the folio edition of Shakespeare's Works in 1623. It is mentioned in the list of the poet's dramas given by Meres in his Palladis Tamia, 1598, but it was unquestionably written much earlier, and in style and expression it bears some resemblance to the Venus and Adonis and Lucrece of 1593-1594. The smooth elaboration of the verse, the play upon words-often poor enough-and the romantic nature of the incidents, all betoken youthful feeling, before the author's style had been formed, or he had gained consciousness of his varied strength. His delicacy of taste, however, when compared with his rivals, Peele, Green, or Marlowe, is remarkable, and must have been the result of careful culture. His type of female character-at once ideal and real, and which was completed in Rosalind, Imogen, and Miranda-is also shadowed forth in this play. 'The opinion once prevailed,' says Coleridge, but is happily now abandoned, that Fletcher alone wrote for women. The truth is, that with very few, and those partial exceptions, the female characters in the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher are, when of the light kind, not decent; when heroic, complete viragos. But in Shakespeare, all the elements of womanhood are holy, and there is the sweet yet dignified feeling of all that continuates society, as a sense of ancestry and of sex, with a purity unassailable by sophistry, because it rests not in the analytic processes, but in that same equipoise of the faculties, during which the feelings are representative of all past experience-not of the individual only, but of all those by whom she has been educated, and their predecessors even up to the first mother that lived. Shakespeare saw that the want of prominence, which Pope notices for sarcasm "Most women have no characters at all" was the blessed beauty of the woman's character, and knew that it arose not from any deficiency, but from the more exquisite harmony of all the parts of the moral being, constituting one living total of head and heart. He has drawn it, indeed, in all its distinctive energies of faith, patience, constancy, fortitude— shewn in all of them following the heart, which gives its results by a nice tact and happy intuition, without the intervention of the discursive faculty, sees all things in and by the light of the affections, and errs, if it ever err, in the exaggeration of love alone. In all the Shakespearian women, there is essentially the same foundation and principle; the distinct individuality and variety are merely the result of the modification of circumstances, whether in Miranda the maiden, in Imogen the wife, or in Katherine the queen.' And the critic might have added, that no example of this just and beautiful delineation of female character existed on the stage prior to the dramas of Shakespeare. Mr Hallam thought that the imagination of Shakespeare must have been 'guided by some familiarity with romances before it struck out this comedy.' He had no doubt read most of the literature of fancy and fiction then accessible to English students. The Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, 1590, is supposed to have furnished an outline of some of the incidents in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, but the poet's obligations to that dreary pastoral romance are really very slight. He was more indebted to a Spanish pastoral, the Diana of George of Montemayor. The story . of Proteus and Julia closely resembles a similar one in the Diana, entitled 'The Shepherdess Felismena.' There is an apparent objection to this in the fact, that the Two Gentlemen of Verona was one of Shakespeare's earliest plays, while the Diana was not translated until 1598, in which year Meres mentions the Two Gentlemen of Verona as one of the known works of Shakespeare. But Bartholomew Young, the translator, states in his preface, that his version had lain by him finished 'Horace's ten and six years more;' and in those days, when manuscripts were freely circulated, the Diana may have come into the hands of the successful and popular young dramatist. He had also another opportunity of becoming acquainted with the incidents in question. A play, entitled The History of Felix and Philiomena, is recorded as having been acted before the queen in 1584, and the names leave little doubt that the old drama was founded on the Spanish romance of Montemayor, whence the story of Proteus and Julia was derived. Pope has remarked, that 'the style of this comedy is less figurative and more natural and unaffected than the greater part of this author's, though supposed to be one of the first he ever wrote.' The chief cause, we presume, was youthful timidity. Shakespeare had previously tried the 'high heroic style' in adapting the old historical plays for the theatre, and must have been disgusted with the rant and fustian that came before him. When he attempted a new style, the comedy of social life and nature, he evidently was diffident and distrustful of himself; yet there are passages of exquisite description and musical versification in this piece, and the coarse humour of Launce with his dog is in the true Shakespearian vein. The occasional confusion as to the names and distance of places, and making Verona and Milan seaport towns, are blunders of a class wholly disregarded by all the old dramatists. "The scene of this play,' says Mr Charles Knight, 'is, in the first act, at Verona, and afterwards chiefly at Milan. The action is not founded upon any historical event. The one historical fact mentioned in this play, is that of the emperor holding his court at Milan, which was under the government of a duke, who was a vassal of the empire. Assuming that this fact prescribes a limit to the period of the action, we must necessarily place that period at least half a century before the date of the composition of this drama.' In fact, an Italian duke or emperor, like a shipwreck, an elopement in disguise, or other romantic incident, was one of the common stock-properties of the Elizabethan dramatists, without consideration of historical fact or probability. 'In this play, there is a strange mixture of knowledge and ignorance. The versification is often excellent; the allusions are learned and just; but the author conveys his heroes by sea from one inland town to another in the same country; he places the emperor at Milan, and sends his young men to attend him, but never mentions him more; he makes Proteus, after an interview with Silvia, say he has only seen her picture; and if we may credit old copies, he has, by mistaking places, left his scenery inextricable. The reason of all this confusion seems to be, that he took his story from a novel, which he sometimes followed and sometimes forsook, sometimes remembered and sometimes forgot. That this play is rightly attributed to Shakespeare, I have little doubt. If it be taken from him, to whom shall it be given? This question may be asked of all the disputed plays, except Titus Andronicus; and it will be found more credible, that Shakespeare might sometimes sink below his highest flights, than that any other should rise up to his lowest.' -JOHNSON. 'Johnson's general remarks on this play are just, except that part in which he arraigns the conduct of the poet, for making Proteus say that he had only seen the picture of Silvia, when it appears that he had had a personal interview with her. This, however, is not a blunder of Shakespeare's, but a mistake of Johnson's, who considers the passage alluded to in a more literal sense than the author intended it. Sir Proteus, it is true, had seen Silvia for a few moments; but though he could form from thence some idea of her person, he was still unacquainted with her temper, manners, and the qualities of her mind. He therefore considers himself as having seen her picture only. The thought is just, and elegantly expressed.'—M. MASON. |