Further Reading
- Adelman, Janet, "Male Bonding in Shakespeare's Comedies," In Shakespeare's "Rough Magic": Renaissance Essays in Honor of C. L. Barber, edited by Peter Erickson and Coppélla Kahn, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1985, pp. 73-103. (Claims that The Comedy of Errors and Two Gentlemen of Verona wrestle with the theme of male bonding and its disruption by women, a theme that reappears in Shakespeare's later tragedies and romances.)
- Beadle, Richard, "Crab's Pedigree," In English Comedy, edited by Michael Cordner, Peter Holland, and John Kerrigan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 12-35. (Examines the role of the dog, Crab, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and discusses the influence of the “clown-and-dog” tradition on Shakespeare's use of Crab in the play.)
- Bentley, Greg, "Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona," Explicator 46, no. 4 (Summer 1988): 7-9. (Studies Valentine's pun about Sebastian/Julia at the end of the play.)
- Berryman, John, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," In Berryman's Shakespeare, edited by John Haffenden, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999, pp. 314-17. (A brief overview of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, including comments on the sources and dating of the play.)
- Brooks, Charles, "Shakespeare's Heroine Actresses," Shakespeare Jahrbuch 96 (1960): 134-44. (Examines the girl-page character in several of Shakespeare's plays to explore its relevance to contemporary issues of appearance versus reality and the quest for identity.)
- Brooks, Harold F., "Two Clowns in a Comedy (to say nothing of the Dog): Speed and Launce (and Crab) in The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Essays and Studies, n.s. 16 (1963): 91-100. (Suggests that the comic characters in the play are paralleled in the major themes.)
- Feingold, Michael, "Wading Game," Village Voice 39, no. 35 (30 August 1994): 81. (Faults Adrian Hall's production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona for its lack of focus and direction, noting that staging the play against the backdrop of Central Park took away from the performance, despite the skill of some of the actors.)
- Goldberg, Jonathan, "Shakespearean Characters: The Generation of Silvia," Voice Terminal Echo: Postmodernism and English Renaissance Texts, New York: Methuen, 1986, pp. 68-100. (Examines the significance of Silvia's name to her character and to her destiny within The Two Gentlemen of Verona and demonstrates the relational significance between name and character within several other Shakespearean texts.)
- Hallett, Charles A., "‘Metamorphising’ Proteus: Reversal Strategies in The Two Gentlemen of Verona," in Two Gentlemen of Verona: Critical Essays, edited by June Schlueter, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1996, pp. 153-77. (Examines the reversals experienced by the principal characters in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and contends that the reversals are unconvincing and unmotivated.)
- Hamilton, A. C., "The Early Comedies: The Two Gentlemen of Verona," In The Early Shakespeare, San Marino, Cal.: Huntington Library, 1967, pp. 109-27. (Examines the theme of "the conflicting claims of friendship and love" in Two Gentlemen, claiming that the play explores issues that recur in many of Shakespeare's later works.)
- Haslem, Lori Schroeder, " 'O Me, the Word Choose!': Female Voice and Catechetical Ritual in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Merchant of Venice," Shakespeare Studies 22 (1994): 122-40. (Examines the "private talk" of the female characters in The Merchant of Venice and The Two Gentlemen of Verona and contends that "female values ultimately defer to male values at the romantic close of each play.")
- Holmberg, Arthur, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Shakespearean Comedy as a Rite of Passage," Queen's Quarterly 90, No. 1 (Spring 1983): 33-44. (Emphasizes the importance of seeing a live performance of The Two Gentlemen of Verona in order to understand the play as symbolic of the rite of passage from adolescence to adulthood.)
- Hutchings, Geoffrey, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," In Shakespeare in Perspective, Vol. 2, edited by Roger Sales, London: Ariel Books/British Broadcasting Corporation, 1985, pp. 191-96. (Examines the concept of love in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and contends that the play is about “adolescent love and irrational behavior.”)
- Jaarsma, Richard J., "The ‘Lear Complex’ in The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Literature and Psychology XXII, No. 4 (1972): 199-202. (Demonstrates that psychological parallels exist between the father-daughter confrontations in King Lear and The Two Gentlemen of Verona.)
- Kiefer, Frederick, "Love Letters in The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Shakespeare Studies 18 (1986): 65-85. (Explains the dramaturgical significance of the love letters written in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, maintaining that such letters are used for theatrical purposes, such as advancing the plot and revealing character, as well as to explore a paradox: “that people seek to express the most intense emotion by the most conventional of literary modes, the epistolary.”)
- McNulty, Charles, "Just Diversions," American Theatre 13, no. 7 (September 1996): 11. (Review of 1971 Tony Award-winning musical adaptation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona by John Guare and Mel Shapiro.)
- Myers, Jeffrey Rayner, "‘In Nothing Am I Chang'd but in My Garments’: Shakespearean Cross-Dressing and the Politics of Sexual Frustration," Annals of Scholarship: An International Quarterly in the Humanities and Social Sciences 11, no. 3 (1997): 217-38. (Examines the use of deferred sexual gratification as a dramatic device in three Shakespearean plays, including The Two Gentlemen of Verona.)
- Rossky, William, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona as Burlesque," English Literary Renaissance 12, No. 2 (Spring 1982): 210-19. (Suggests that the play is actually a satirical study of love and romance, especially in regards to its controversial ending.)
- Schleiner, Louise, "Voice, Ideology, and Gendered Subjects: The Case of As You Like It and Two Gentlemen," Shakespeare Quarterly 50, no. 3 (Autumn 1999): 285-309. (Studies ideological tensions in Shakespeare's writing using Two Gentlemen and As You Like It as representative examples.)
- Simmons, J. L., "Coming Out in Shakespeare's The Two Gentlemen of Verona," ELH 60, no. 4 (1993): 857-77. (Examines The Two Gentlemen of Verona as a play that reflects Shakespeare's anxiety regarding his debut as a young playwright, an image that is resonant throughout the action of the play.)
- Slights, Camille Wells, "Common Courtesy in The Two Gentlemen of Verona," In Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993, pp. 57-73. (Examines the play as a study of the manners of courtly society, and studies the way in which that society valued both love and friendship.)
- Smallwood, Robert, "Shakespeare Performances in England, 1996," Shakespeare Survey: An Annual Survey of Shakespeare Studies and Production, 50 (1999): 201-04. (Reviews the debut production of Two Gentlemen at the newly refurbished Globe theater in London as disappointing and unworthy of its surroundings.)
- Thomas, Paul R., "The Marriage of True Minds—Ideal Friendship in The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Iowa State Journal of Research 57, No. 2 (November 1982): 187-92. (Argues that the difficulties modern readers have with understanding the characters of Julia and Silvia dissolve when the concept of ideal friendship or “amite” is properly understood.)
- Tillyard, E. M. W., "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," In Shakespeare's Early Comedies, London: Chatto and Windus, 1965, pp. 112-36. (Explains why Two Gentlemen has been given so many negative critical appraisals and explores the counterbalancing themes exhibited in the text.)
- Vaughn, Jack A., "The Two Gentlemen of Verona," In Shakespeare's Comedies, New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1980, pp. 34-44. (Critically assesses the play and examines the themes that reappear in Shakespeare's later comedies.)
- Weimann, Robert, "Laughing with the Audience: The Two Gentlemen of Verona and the Popular Tradition of Comedy," Shakespeare Survey 22 (1969): 35-42. (Maintains that audience participation serves a central dramatic function, structuring and controlling the play's comic vision.)
- Weller, Barry, "Identity and Representation in Shakespeare," ELH 49, no. 2 (Summer 1982): 339-62. (Contends that theater provides a realistic and powerful representation of human behavior, and that Shakespeare's writing is evidence of this thesis. Examines several major Shakespearean characters in this context, as well as his early plays, including The Two Gentlemen of Verona.)
- Wells, Stanley, "The Failure of The Two Gentlemen of Verona," Shakespeare Jahrbuch 99 (1963): 161-73. (Interpretation of The Two Gentlemen of Verona informed by H. B. Charlton's reading of the play, which contends that Shakespeare failed to make successful use of the conventions of romantic love in this work.)
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