The Date of Two Gentlemen of Verona
Shakespeare’s play “Two Gentlemen of Verona” is said to be one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays. In chronology, it is believed to have been produced after “Love’s Labor Lost” (1589) and “The Comedy of Errors” (1590). In his introduction, Garnett writes that the play “breathes the inspiration of eager, thoughtless, irresponsible youth” and clearly belongs among Shakespeare’s earliest works.
The Plot of Two Gentlemen of Verona
The plot of Shakespeare’s “Two Gentlemen of Verona”, as Garnett explains, is “expanded from an episode in the second book of Jorge de Montemayor’s famous Spanish romance2, “La Diana Enamorada,” where Felismena is represented as disguising herself in man’s apparel, entering the service of her false lover as a page, and employed by him to recommend his suit to the new object of his devotion, precisely Julia’s relations to Proteus and Silvia. Shakespeare, indeed, has ingeniously and with enhanced dramatic effect complicated the plot, and provided for a fortunate solution by giving the false knight a friend to whom he is as treacherous as to his mistress, but the essence of the situation is in Montemayor.”
The Text of Two Gentlemen of Verona
Notes
- Garnett, Richard. Introduction to Two Men of Verona. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New York. (1906)
- Monte Mayor, George. Diana. (1598)
