|
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a comedy by William Shakespeare from early in his career. It is regarded by most critics as inferior and is seldom performed today. The highlight of the play is considered by many to be the comic servingman Launce and his dog Crab. Comedy is the use of humor in the form of theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. ...
Wikipedia does not yet have an article with this exact name. ...
Synopsis
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow. The two gentlemen are Valentine and Proteus. Valentine leaves Verona to visit Milan to gain life experience. He leaves behind his best friend, Proteus, first chiding Proteus for concentrating more on matters of love than matters of the mind. As fate would design it, Proteus' father agrees with Valentine and soon sends Proteus to Milan. After a tearful goodbye with his beloved, Julia, Proteus finds Valentine in love with Silvia, the daughter of the Duke. Unfortunately, Proteus also falls for Silvia and does everything he can to clear his own path to Silvia. While Proteus is figuring out how to win Silvia over, back in Verona, Julia decides to join her faithful friend and travels to Milan dressed as a boy. There she finds out about Proteus' betrayal and becomes his page until she can figure out what to do. The play concludes in a tense confrontation in a forest, where Proteus attempts to rape Silvia. Valentine saves her, but then 'gives' her to Proteus in the name of friendship. Julia faints, revealing her identity in the process. Proteus remembers his love for Julia and returns to her. Map of Italy showing Verona in the north Verona (population est. ...
Milan (Italian: Milano; Milanese: Milán) is the main city of northern Italy, and is located in the plains of Lombardy, the most populated and developed region in Italy. ...
In the comic subplot, even Launce finds romance, whereupon he devises a comic resume of the attributes of a lower-class girl "whose faults exceed her hairs."
Date The date of composition is uncertain, although it is commonly believed to have been one of Shakespeare's earliest works. The play is believed to have been written in the early 1590s, although the first evidence of its existence is in [[Francis he sucked balls until 1623 when it appeared in the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays. Events 1590 March 14 - Battle of Ivry - Henry IV of France again defeats the forces of the Catholic League under the Duc de Mayenne. ...
Events August 6 - Pope Urban VIII is elected to the Papacy. ...
This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...
Source The ultimate source for the play is the story of Felix and Felismena in Diana, a collection of stories by the Portuguese writer Jorge de Montemayor. Shakespeare could have read this in translation, but a play (now lost) based on the story is known to have been performed by the Queen's Men in 1585, and so Two Gents may simply be an adaptation of that play. Jorge de Montemayor (or Montemor) (1520? - February 26, 1561), Spanish novelist and poet, of Portuguese descent, was born at Montemor o Velho (near Coimbra), whence he derived his name, the Spanish form of which is Montemayor. ...
Queen Annes Men, or the Queens Men, was a Jacobean theatrical company. ...
1585 was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar or a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. ...
Themes A major theme of the play is the contest between friendship and love: that is, the question of whether the relationship between two male friends is more important than that between lovers. This is a common theme in Renaissance literature, since some aspects of the culture of the time celebrated friendship as the more important relationship (because it is pure and unconcerned with sexual attraction). This partly helps explain the bizarre sequence in which Valentine 'gives' Silvia to Proteus out of friendship, without even asking her. Look up Friendship in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
The Chinese character for love —its parts indicating (top to bottom): That which gives breath (ie. ...
Renaissance literature is European literature, after the Dark Ages over an extended period, usually considered to be initiated by Petrarch at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, and sometimes taken to continue to the English Renaissance and into the seventeenth century. ...
Connections with Shakespeare's other work - Valentine's attempt at rescuing Silvia from her controlling father, and his subsequent banishment, is distantly reminiscent of what happens to Romeo in Romeo and Juliet.
- Shakespeare returned to the subject of close friends fighting over a woman at the very end of his career, in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
- Valentine's and Silvia's plan to elope in the night and their interactions with Proteus and Julia in the forest, are reminiscent of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
- This could very well be the first play where Shakespeare utilized the plot device of having a female disguise herself as a male, later used in such plays as As You Like It and Twelfth Night.
- Launce is noted to have many similarities with the character Launcelot Gobbo, from The Merchant of Venice. Not only are their names similar but also their manners of speech, their occupations, and their similar dramatic functions in their respective plays. They were almost certainly played by the same actor, William Kempe.
The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, commonly referred to as Romeo and Juliet, is a play by William Shakespeare concerning the fate of two young lovers who would do anything to be together. ...
The Two Noble Kinsmen is a play written in 1613 by John Fletcher and William Shakespeare in collaboration. ...
A Midsummer Nights Dream is a romantic comedy by William Shakespeare written sometime in the mid-1590s. ...
Scene from As you like it, Francis Hayman, c. ...
Twelfth Night has at least three meanings: Twelfth Night (holiday), celebrated by some Christians Twelfth Night, or What You Will, a comedic play by William Shakespeare Twelfth Night (band), a progressive rock band This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the...
This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ...
William Kempe (also spelled Kemp) (fl. ...
Two Gents in popular culture Galt MacDermot (born December 18, 1928 in Montreal, Quebec) is a Canadian writer of musical theater, best known for the show Hair, which ran for nearly 2000 performances in both London and New York and was later made into a film in 1979. ...
John Guare (gwâr) was born February 5, 1938 in New York City and raised in Queens. ...
December 1 is the 335th (in leap years the 336th) day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (the link is to a full 1971 calendar). ...
May 20 is the 140th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (141st in leap years). ...
1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ...
Shakespeare in Love is a 1998 motion picture. ...
1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ...
External links Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Two Gentlemen of Verona Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Two Gentlemen of Verona - The Two Gentlemen of Verona - plain text from Project Gutenberg
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona - HTML version of this title.
- The Two Gentlemen of Verona musical - The script to the MacDermot-Guare-Shapiro musical adaptation.
|
Feeds |
Contact