All the Bloody Shakespeare: Two Gentlemen of Verona

He wonder'd that your lordship
Would suffer him to spend his youth at home,

 

I have to say, this one almost killed the whole Shakespeare project for me.

There is a play called The Yorkshire Tragedy that was originally attributed to Shakespeare.  Critics have generally said The Yorkshire Tragedy has to be knock off Shakespeare because it's just not good enough to be written by him.  I’ve read it, it isn’t this bad. 

Now, I didn’t start this project with the intention of saying all Shakey’s plays were rubbish.  But so far, that is how the wind is blowing.  Hopefully, Love’s Labour’s Lost will break the streak.

Two Gentlemen of Verona is about two friends, Proteus and Valentine.  Proteus moves to Milan and falls in love with the Duke’s daughter Silvia.  Valentine stays in Verona because he’s in love with Julia, who is overplaying her hand with him.  He follows Proteus to Milan, meets Silvia falls in love with her.  But he’s not as gentlemanly as the title suggests and he gets banned from the city and falls in with some pantomime outlaws, who could provide some cool action sequences but can’t be bothered.

Julia who was in love with Valentine all along dresses up as a page boy and follows Valentine to Milan.  There’s lots of dramatic irony as he drones on and on to her about Silvia.  Though by the end, she’s forgiven him for some reason, and the day is saved by her total lack of respect for herself.  Oh and Proteus gets Silvia, in case you hadn’t guessed.

The highlight of the play is that there is a servant called Panthino.  You can claw some entertainment from the story by pretending all his lines are delivered by Panthro from The Thundercats.  

Another thing that seemed like it might save the play was the arrival of Launce (a clownish servant to Proteus). Launce has a dog.  And, who doesn't like dogs? 

Launce, as it turns out.

Launce is upset that Proteus has left Verona and immediately sets about trying to make the audience hate the dog, who is unmoved by Proteus going away.  When even a Jew would have wept over it.  This seems like a bit of a cheap shot on Shakespeare's part.  Let us hope this anti-Semitism is a one-off and doesn't end up colouring our interpretation of any of his later plays.

I've spoken too soon, the next time we see Launce he immediately sets in on the Jews again:

Launce. Why, I tell thee, I care not, though he burn himself in love. If thou wilt, go with me to the alehouse; if not, thou art an Hebrew, a Jew, and not worth the name of a Christian.

So that's Launce.  If you care to read the play you can also look forward to three pages of sheep jokes with disturbingly sexual undertones.  A bunch of jokes that play on the fact that a wooden staff is long and cylindrical like the fleshy tube of the distended male member.  And a sequence where Launce compares a woman to a horse, a spaniel and a milkmaid all within a few sentences.  You can probably guess the inference of each without my getting into it.

Oh, there's a brief cameo from the brave and loyal Sir Eglamour who turns out to be neither brave or loyal in this story. And rather than fighting boars, giants, dragons and griffins like he normally would, scarpers at the first hint of trouble.  

1/5 Nobody you ever meet will have read this, so why the hell would you bother?