Two Gentlemen of Verona

“PROTEUS. Thou, Julia, thou has metamorphosed me,

Made me neglect my studies lose my time,

War with good counsel, set the world at naught;

Made wit with musing weak, heart sick with thought.”

Although Proteus defends lovers in his debate with Valentine, he privately suggests that his love for Julia is ruining his life. He says that Julia has transformed him: Because of her, he is neglecting his studies, ignoring the good advice of others, and generally rejecting the world. The final line suggests that thoughts of her are not only making him heartsick but also weakening his wit, or his sense of self.

“JULIA. His little speaking shows his love but small.

LUCETTA. Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.

JULIA. They do not love, that do not show their love.

LUCETTA. O, they love least that let men know their love.”

Like Valentine and Proteus, Julia and her maid, Lucetta, also disagree about the nature of love. This passage suggests that Lucetta’s age and experience have made her cynical about elaborate proclamations of love, while Julia wants her lover to be vocal about his feelings. The speed of the dialogue and the fact that their lines rhyme demonstrates the intimacy between these two women.

“JULIA. Fie, Fie, how wayward is this foolish love

That like a testy babe will scratch the nurse

And presently, all humbled, kiss the rod!

How churlishly I chid Lucetta hence

When willingly I would have had her here!”

The episode with Proteus’s letter demonstrates both Julia’s impulsive, temperamental nature and her self-awareness of her own flaws. As she admits here, she rudely sends Lucetta away with the letter even though she wants desperately to read it. However, Julia is maturing: She recognizes that her temper is childish, and attributes her foolishness to falling in love.

“ANTONIO. I have considered well his loss of time,

And how he cannot be a perfect man,

Not being tried and tutored in the world.”

This passage demonstrates an important cultural attitude about adulthood: Antonio believes that his son Proteus cannot be considered a full adult until he has had some experience out in the world. For Proteus to be a true gentleman, he must leave his parents’ home in Verona and seek his own fortune, as Valentine has done.

“SPEED. My master sues to her, and she hath taught her suitor,

He being her pupil, to become her tutor.

O excellent device! Was there ever heard better?—

That my master, being scribe, to himself should write the letter!”

This scene includes the first moment in the play that Speed speaks in verse, rather than prose; the fact that the verse is rhymed couplets draws additional attention to his suddenly elevated language. Speed’s use of prose here reflects the fact that he has figured out Silvia’s trick before Valentine, flipping the hierarchy of their relationship.

“PROTEUS. Me thinks my zeal to Valentine is cold,

And that I love him not as I was wont—

O, but I love his lady too-too much,

And that’s the reason I love him so little.”

This passage adds another important element to the play’s thematic consideration of love: that romantic love creates competition between men which negatively affects their friendships, undermining The Importance of Loyalty Between Men. In this instance, Proteus explicitly attributes his coldness toward Valentine to his new love for Silvia.

“PROTEUS. To leave my Julia shall I be forsworn?

To love fair Silvia shall I be forsworn?

To wrong my friend I shall be much forsworn.”

This passage reflects the play’s emphasis on male friendships over romantic relationships. Proteus feels unsure whether abandoning Julia in favor of Silvia means breaking an oath, or if he can honestly return to Julia after declaring his love for Silvia. However, the final line suggests that he is confident that his love for Silvia breaks the oath of friendship he has with Valentine. Proteus is willing to be flexible about his oaths with women, but not with men.

“JULIA. The current that with gentle murmur glides

Thou know’st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage;

But when his fair course is not hindered,

He makes sweet music with th’enamelled stones,

Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge

He overtaketh in his pilgrimage.”

Here, Shakespeare employs a metaphor to suggest that love should not be repressed or tamed. Julia compares love to a river that churns impatiently when it is blocked by a dam, but babbles pleasantly when allowed to proceed naturally. The language of pilgrimage reflects Julia’s conception of herself as a pilgrim of love traveling to see her beloved.

“JULIA. But tell me, wench, how will the world repute me

For undertaking so unstaid a journey?

I fear me it will make me scandalized.”

Julia’s concern for her reputation is central to her character development across the play. Although desperate to protect her reputation, in this moment Julia willingly risk it in order to be reunited with Proteus, donning an elaborate disguise to subvert The Restrictions of Courtly Love for Women.

“DUKE. I am now full resolved to take a wife,

And turn her out to who will take her in.

Then let her beauty be her wedding dower

For me and my possessions she esteems not.”

This passage establishes the cultural expectations for noblewomen in Shakespeare’s lifetime, and the restrictions produced by those expectations. Because Silvia is not willing to marry her father’s choice of suitor, she is at risk of being disinherited and denied a dowry—the payment a bride’s family gives to her future husband. The Duke’s willingness to ruin his daughter’s life because of her disobedience highlights the patriarchal norms of the Elizabethan era that empowered noblemen to control every aspect of their daughters’ lives.

“VALENTINE. If she do frown, ‘tis not in hate of you,

But rather to beget more love in you.

If she do chide, ‘tis not to have you gone,

Forwhy the fools are mad if left alone.”

Valentine’s advice to the Duke about how to seduce women reflects common beliefs about romantic relationships in Shakespeare’s time. The concept of courtly love—highly stylized romantic relationships restricted to elite society—required that noble women reject the advances of male suitors until they prove themselves worthy with repeated acts of devotion. The causal relationship between this attitude and sexual assault becomes clear in the last act of the play.

“LANCE. I am but a fool, look you, and yet I have the wit to think my master is a kind of a knave.”

Throughout the play, the working-class characters provide a comic alternative to the high romantic drama of the noble characters—comedy that often relies on the premise that the servants are less intelligent than their “masters.” Here, Lance references that assumption to demonstrate the lengths of Proteus’s betrayal: Even his most loyal servant thinks that he is acting inappropriately.

“DUKE. And Proteus, we dare trust you in this kind

Because we know, on Valentine’s report,

You are already love’s firm votary,

And cannot soon revolt, and change your mind.”

Both the humor and dramatic tension of this passage rest on irony—the audience knows that Proteus has, in fact, changed his mind about his love for Julia, and is actively planning to pursue Silvia. The use of end rhymes (“kind” and “mind”) and internal rhymes (“report” and “revolt”) in this quatrain draw the audience’s attention to the Duke’s unwarranted confidence, and highlights Proteus’s shame.

“PROTEUS. For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poets’ sinews,

Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,

Make tigers tame and huge leviathans

Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.”

Proteus evokes the Greek mythical poet Orpheus in order to encourage Thurio to use poetry and music to seduce Silvia. These lines suggest that women are hard (like steel and stones) and dangerous (like tigers and leviathans), but can be softened and tamed with the right poetry.

“THIRD OUTLAW. Know, then, that some of us are gentlemen

Such as the fury of ungoverned youth

Thrust from the company of lawful men.

Myself was from Verona banished

For practicing to steal away a lady.”

This passage suggests that Valentine is not the only noble-born man who acts outside of the rules of society when he meets an outlaw with a remarkably similar story to his own. The fact that these outlaws group together and would elect a man like Valentine as their King suggests that banishment has not resolved their bad behaviors.

“PROTEUS. But Silvia is too fair, too true, too holy

To be corrupted with my worthless gifts.

When I protest true loyalty to her,

She twits me with my falsehood to my friend.”

This passage highlights the contradiction at the heart of courtly love: the goodness and virtue that Proteus claims to love in Silvia prevent her from giving in to his advances. Silvia’s loyalty to Valentine leads her to call out Proteus’s infidelity.

“Urge not my father’s anger, Eglamour,

But think upon my grief—a lady’s grief—

And on the justice of my flying hence

To keep me from a most unholy match.”

Silvia enlists Eglamour, a widowed old knight, to help her escape Milan because she knows that he is a romantic: after his beloved wife died, he vowed never to be with another woman. Silvia casts both herself and Eglamour as archetypal literary depictions of courtly love, establishing herself as a romantic heroine grieving for her lover, and Eglamour as the hero who can save her from breaking her vows.

“LANCE. I’ll be sworn I have sat in the stocks for puddings he hath stolen, otherwise he had been executed. I have stood on the pillory for geese he hath killed, otherwise he had suffered for’t.”

Shakespeare uses this comedic scene involving Lance and Crab the dog for a serious purpose: demonstrating Lance’s loyalty to his beloved pet in stark contrast to Proteus’s betrayal of his friend Valentine. Here, Lance says that he has been publicly punished and humiliated in order to protect Crab from being killed for stealing food and killing other animals, whereas Proteus eschews The Importance of Loyalty Between Men in service of his own desires.

“JULIA. For I did play a lamentable part—

Madam, ‘twas Ariadne, passioning

For Theseus’ perjury and unjust flight—

Which I so lively acted with my tears

That my poor mistress, moved therewithal

Wept bitterly.”

In this passage, Julia (disguised as Sebastian) makes up a situation in which Sebastian performed as the tragic heroine Ariadne using Julia’s clothes. Ariadne’s betrayal by her lover Theseus mirrors Julia’s own betrayal by Proteus. In addition, the reference to male actors portraying women on stage acts as a subtle reminder to the audience that “Julia” is—in Elizabethan era England—a teenage boy acting the part of a woman.

“VALENTINE. Here I can sit alone, unseen of any,

And to the nightingale’s complaining notes

Tune my distresses and record my woes.”

From the moment he meets Silvia, Shakespeare presents Valentine as the stereotypical romantic lover. Here, Valentine describes the forest as the perfect place for lovers to sulk in nature, pine for their beloved and write poetry—the very things he claimed to despise at the opening of the play.

“SILVIA. Thou hast no faith left now, unless thou’dst two,

And that’s far worse than none. Better have none

Than plural faith, which is too much by one,

Thou counterfeit to thy true friend.”

These lines highlight a central expectation of courtly love: that lovers devote themselves entirely to one person, forsaking all others. Silvia aims the insult in the final line at Proteus’s faithlessness to his friends as well as his beloved.

“VALENTINE. Who by repentance is not satisfied

Is nor of heaven nor earth, for these are pleased.

By penitence th’ Eternal’s wrath’s appeased.”

Valentine accepts Proteus’s apology because he believes that Proteus truly regrets his actions. His forgiveness prevents Silvia from protesting—first because he grants it at all, privileging the offense done to him and disregarding the wrong done to her, and second by implying that it would be inhuman or un-Christian for Silva to reject Proteus’s apology. 

“JULIA. It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,

Women to change their shapes than mend their minds.”

In these lines, Julia acknowledges the social impropriety of a lady of her status to wear men’s clothing. However, she also subtly suggests that the more inappropriate behavior is for a man of Proteus’s stature to be inconstant and fickle in love.