SOURCE: Rowse, A. L. Introduction to The Contemporary Shakespeare Series: Antony and Cleopatra, Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Troilus and Cressida, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Vol. V, edited by A. L. Rowse, pp. 505-10. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1986.

[In the following essay, Rowse provides a brief overview of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, tracing a connection between contemporary events in Shakespeare's life and the action of the play.]

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is Shakespeare's first experiment in romantic comedy, but its prime interest is its autobiographical significance. He had already shown his range and accomplishment in chronicle plays with Henry VI, tragedy with Titus Andronicus, farce with The Comedy of Errors; throughout his career he was always ready to experiment, to respond to new challenges. Naturally to those of the theatre, but especially to those that chimed with personal experience.

Everything shows that the year is 1592, the first year of his momentous relationship with his young patron, and the theme of the play is the conflict between the claims of friendship and those of love—as in the Sonnets, with which we find revealing parallels of expression. So too with the experience that went into the play. It appears to have been written rapidly, perhaps for private performance, the end suddenly unravelled in a way that has dismayed critics.

The conclusion of the play has been generally regarded as improbable and unconvincing. Of the two gentlemen, Proteus deserts his own first love, for Valentine's Silvia, and betrays his friend to the Duke. On being exposed, he repents and asks for forgiveness; upon which Valentine says,

Who by repentance is not satisfied
Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased;
By penitence the Eternal's wrath's appeased.
And, that my love may appear plain and free,
All that was mine in Silvia I give thee.

Everybody finds it rather shocking, but this was precisely what happened between Shakespeare and his young friend and patron over the Dark Lady, Emilia Bassano, Mrs. Lanier. She made a pass at Southampton, who—though ambivalent and less vulnerable than his poet—was entangled, to Shakespeare's grief and alarm. The youth repented:

Though thou repent, yet I have still the loss.

And Shakespeare concludes, like Valentine in the play:

Take all my loves, my love; yea, take them all.

It is extraordinary that people have never perceived the autobiographical significance of this play, when it is written into the first scene. One friend says to the other:

Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud
The eating canker dwells, so eating love
Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

The other friend continues:

And writers say, as the most forward bud
Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turned to folly.

Who are the writers who say this? Shakespeare is referring to himself. At this very moment in Sonnet 35, he is charging his friend and patron of betraying him with his dark young mistress, Emilia. Southampton repented of his betrayal of friendship:

No more be grieved at that which thou hast done,
Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud …
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.

Even more remarkable is the realisation of what Shakespeare thought of himself in the give-away phrase, ‘the finest wits of all.’ It bears out Robert Greene's observation, in this same year, of the actor's good opinion of himself, challenging the university wits in turning to writing plays.

We hear that note in his reproach to the young woman whose attitude to him is so ambivalent—‘If I might teach thee wit.’ For she could not fully respond to the older man's infatuation. The play at this same moment corroborates the experience:

O, 'tis the curse in love and still approved
          [ever proved]
When women cannot love where they're beloved.

Evidently his wit—Elizabethans meant by that intelligence, intellect—was a source of attraction in an older man for her.

As for his young friend who has betrayed him, the play closely repeats the experience recorded in the Sonnets:

O, how this spring of love resembleth
          The uncertain glory of an April day,
Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,
          And by and by a cloud takes all away.

Sonnet 33 repeats just this:

Full many a glorious morning have I seen …
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride …
Even so, my sun one early morn did shine …
But out, alack, he was but one hour mine,
The region cloud hath masked him from me now.

Sonnet 34 goes on,

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day …
To let base clouds o'ertake me in my way,
'Tis not enough that through the cloud thou break
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten-face.

Writers write out of their own experience: this was the experience at this time that went into the play.

In 1592 Marlowe was writing ‘Hero and Leander’ in rivalry with Shakespeare for the young patron's favour. There are even two references to it in the play. One friend says:

Upon some book I love I'll pray for you.

The other replies:

That's on some shallow story of deep love,
How young Leander crossed the Hellespont.

And later, a rope of cords

Would serve to scale another Hero's tower,
So bold Leander would adventure it.

For want of combined historical and literary perception, scholars have been completely uncertain as to the dating of this play. Its date is 1592, in the earlier phase of the relationship with the friend and patron.

It is worth noting that, in this play, the importance of addressing sonnets to the lady of one's love is twice emphasised.

Something of the spirit of the age is evoked, when men

Put forth their sons to seek preferment out:
Some to the wars to try their fortune there;
Some to discover islands far away;
Some to the studious universities …

None of these had been his own route to fame and reputation, though something of a literary fashion of the time appears in the description of the Malcontent, with arms wreathed across breast. The musicality of the age comes through in references to popular songs like ‘Light o' love’, in the chaff about love in musical terms, as in the exquisite songs Shakespeare could always compose for his plays—in this, the beautiful

Who is Silvia? What is she,
          That all our swains commend her?

(We are reminded that Shakespeare's own love, Emilia, was musical.)

What appeals most today are the realistic scenes drawn from lower-class life: Launce, with his dog Crab, who misconducts himself in the dining hall. ‘Did I not tell you always mark me and do as I do? When did you see me heave up my leg and make water against a gentlewoman's farthingale?’ From the very first, with the Jack Cade scenes in Henry VI, Shakespeare had shown his familiar observation of lower-class life and speech, its authenticity and realism. His social range was elastic and expansive—here his profession was such an advantage: it opened all doors to him. Launce and Speed enjoy a good deal of bawdy talk together, punning about ‘standing’, when the same puns occur contemporaneously in the Sonnets.

Since the text that has come down to us is a good one and offers few difficulties, we may note a few points where this modern text comes to the aid of the reader. For example, in the matter of accents to make the scansion clear:

Excuse it not, for I am pèremptòry …
And even in kind love I do conjùe you …
Are visibly charàctered and engraved.

A number of words of one syllable were in fact pronounced as two: these I have marked with a diaeresis or an accent, for example, fïre, hoür, präyer, or hoùr. One word which we pronounce as two syllables has to be spoken as three—oceàn. Not many obsolete words need replacing in this early play—inward for ‘inly’, for example. Shakespeare's liking for recondite words and indirection of phrase grew upon him, increasingly with the middle and later plays, when the help of a modern text becomes all the more urgent.