THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA

No text of this play exists earlier than that in the First Folio, and on it the present edition is based. The title is mentioned by Meres in his Palladis Tamia (1598), and the internal evidence points to a still earlier date. Estimates have varied from 1591 to 1595. The metrical evidence is ambiguous. Rimes are not so frequent as in Love's Labour's Lost and some other early plays; while, on the other hand, the occurrence of doggerel lines, of verses rimed alternately, and of sonnets, points to the earliest group. To these should be added the unskilfulness of the dénouement, and the presence of what appear to be first sketches of characters and devices which are elaborated in later plays. Such are the contrast of the two heroines; the clowns; and the scene in which Julia discusses her suitors with her maid. None of the supposed references to current events or publications is of weight as evidence; and the theory that the play was written at two different times has received little support.

The most important source so far found for the plot is in the story of the shepherdess Felismena in Diana, the famous collection of romances in Spanish by Jorge de Montemayor, published in 1560. No printed English version of Diana appeared before that of Bartholomew Yonge in 1598, but this had existed in manuscript since about 1582. Other manuscript versions were in existence, so there is no great difficulty in supposing that Shakespeare knew the story from this source. Further, it is possible, but by no means certain, that the lost play called Felix and Philiomena, which was acted at Greenwich in 1584, may have dealt with the same theme.

Felismena in Montemayor's romance corresponds to Shakespeare's Julia, and Felix to Proteus; and it is Julia's part of the plot that is found in the Spanish tale. The courtship of Felismena by Felix is much more minutely described in the novel, but its general character is retained by the dramatist. The scene in which Lucetta offers Proteus's letter to Julia follows closely the action of the corresponding scene in the original. The sending of Proteus to court, Julia's following him in disguise as a man, the scene in which she overhears the serenade to her rival, her taking service with Proteus as a page and being sent to Silvia as a messenger, her expressions of sympathy with her own case in her conversation with Proteus, her discussion of the awkwardness of her position when she is sent to plead with Silvia against her own interest, her report of her own beauty to her rival, and Silvia's distrust of Proteus because of his unfaithfulness to his first love, are the main features in which the play follows the romance. On the other hand, the character of Valentine is completely absent in Montemayor, so that Proteus's treachery in friendship is no part of his character in the novel. Moreover, Celia, who corresponds to Shakespeare's Silvia, falls in love with the disguised Felismena (as Olivia does with Viola in Twelfth Night), and finding her love unreciprocated, voluntarily ends her life. The events by which Felix and Felismena are finally brought together bear no resemblance to the closing scenes of The Two Gentlemen.

A volume of Englische Comedien und Tragedien published in Germany in 1620 contains a play with a strong resemblance to the Silvia plot of the present comedy. It is a crude German reproduction of an English tragedy now lost, which had been performed by English actors in Germany. In it Julius corresponds to Proteus, Romulus to Valentine, and Hippolyta to Silvia. The play ends with the killing of Julius by Romulus, and the suicides of Romulus and Hippolyta. It is quite possible that the original was the Phillipo and Hewpolyto mentioned in Henslowe's diary, and that it formed the source of that part of Shakespeare's plot which deals with the relations of Proteus and Silvia to Valentine.

The alleged reminiscences of Sidney's Arcadia and Brookes's Romeus and Juliet are unim portant.