THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA -The One With the Dog!

I first read this play 17 years ago, but it left little impression on me then. So I didn’t really have any high expectations beyond getting through the text when I started on it again earlier this week as the first Shakespeare play on my chronological reading list. To my surprise, however, revisiting it gave me a whole new appreciation of what surely must be one of Shakespeare’s most underrated works.
Though it is not certain this was the first play Shakespeare wrote it is one of the earliest and is listed first in The Oxford Shakespeare’s Complete Works as well as in many other chronologies. It has often been dismissed as the work of an inexperienced writer, a mere curiosity, an immature piece –and by some critics the worst play Shakespeare ever wrote. Well, it’s certainly not the latter; nor is it a masterpiece, but it is the work of a master testing and finding his way in his early days. And two things struck me immediately upon reading it: its lively youthfulness, and the exciting way it seems to encapsulate –in embryonic form– almost every element of what endures Shakespeare’s plays to us today: themes, techniques, plot-elements and creative use of language that later bloom in more well-known and praised plays. And it’s so exciting to experience this! The play is refreshingly uncomplicated and there is a bursting form of creativity that makes me think Shakespeare already had so much more up his sleeve when writing it, but couldn’t get it all in one play; so there are samples of many different wares here, as if Shakespeare is trying out what works best. The version of the play we have today has numerous inconsistencies in geography, time etc. and the final act especially appears very rushed with far too much going on in so few pages, but this text could well have been, as it has been suggested, a shortened version of the play that was taken out on tour. In reading it, and certainly if mounting a production, I think one has to add quite a bit oneself, because in many ways one is presented here with a skeleton that needs to be fleshed out considerably to make sense. But precisely because of this I think The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a play that suits the freedom of modern production far more than it has been afforded so far. (I myself have never seen it staged, though the Royal Shakespeare Company revived it for the first time in years in 2014). I’d also say it is a wonderful play for schools to do because it is a play about youthful issues, written with a youthful perspective and because it allows for a refreshingly broad introduction to Shakespeare’s wonderful world without being bogged down by too much prejudice and the unavoidable baggage of so many more ”worthy” plays. Besides, and perhaps most important: It is fun, it is enjoyable, it has moments of fine poetry and great comedy, music, a good but not too complicated story and easily identifiable characters who are nonetheless not stereotypical but each live and breathe as individuals, including two marvellous, strong female characters. It’s a rom-com indeed, but with an edge, and a somewhat ambiguous ending that really is open to discussion. Shakespeare is more tidy with his endings after this, but here it can go almost any way. And on top of all this, of course, The Two Gentlemen of Verona features Shakespeare’s most famous non-speaking character, Crab, the dog –who bears (I think) the distinction of being the only canine in the canon!

Favourite Lines:
For Orpheus’ lute was strung with poet’s sinews,
Whose golden touch could soften steel and stones,
Make tigers tame, and huge leviathans
Forsake unsounded deeps to dance on sands.
(Proteus –Act III, Sc.2)

O illiterate loiterer!
(Launce –Act III, Sc.1)

Character I would most like to play:
Launce