The Two Gentlemen of Verona

“ Pope and Hanmer.
83 THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA. ACT I. I. 1 Scene I. Verona. An open place. Enter Valentine and Proteus.
Val. Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus:
Home-keeping youth have ever homely wits. ”

“ The Oxford University Dramatic Society, unlike the Cambridge A. D. C., is compelled by the Authorities to walk only amidst the high peaks and sometimes monotonous solitudes of the legitimate drama. The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was chosen for this term's performance, is, if the truth must be told, an uninteresting stage-play. The story is of the slightest; there is scarcely a genuinely dramatic incident from beginning to end. The audience wearies of a succession of pretty pictures and sentimental soliloquies or dialogues, mouths begin to gape, and the attention wanders. ”

“ All we know for certain is that, as it stands, the play discloses bits of immature workmanship and irregularities which may arise from textual alteration.
In view of the fact that in later comedies Shakespeare improved upon virtually all features of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, we need not be surprised at the infrequency of stage-performances of this play. ”

“ But look how you behave!
Love is the master now,
You are the slave.
from The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 2, Scene 1
Valentine: Go to, sir. Tell me, do you know Madam Silvia?
Speed: She that your worship loves? ”

“ To climb celestial Silvia’s chamber-window;
35 Myself in counsel, his competitor.
Now presently I’ll give her father notice
Of their disguising and pretended flight;
Who, all enraged, will banish Valentine;
For Thurio, he intends, shall wed his daughter;
40 But, Valentine being gone, I’ll quickly cross
By some sly trick blunt Thurio’s dull proceeding.
Love, lend me wings to make my purpose swift,
As thou hast lent me wit to plot this drift! Exit.
II. 7 Scene VII. Verona. Julia’s house. Enter Julia and Lucetta.
Jul. Counsel, Lucetta; gentle girl, assist me ”

“ Proteus sues for pardon to Valentine and Julia. He is received to mercy. The Duke after dismissing Thurio, pardons Valentine, and grants him Silvia's hand in marriage.
Love's Labour's Lost is fantasy. The Two Gentlemen of Verona deals with real human relationships. It is a better play than the fantasy, though the fantasy has moments of better poetry. It carries on one of the problems raised in Love's Labour's Lost. It is the work of a troubled mind. It comes from the mood in which the sonnets were written. ”

“ G. P. Baker: The Development of Shakespeare as a Dramatist (New York, 1907) , pp. 116–123.
A. H. Tolman: Questions on Shakespeare, Part II (Chicago, [1910] ) , pp. 261–297.
Brander Matthews: Shakspere as a Playwright (New York, 1913) , pp. 73–78.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch and John Dover Wilson (Cambridge, 1921) . ”

“ These characters and their established costumes were derived from different cities of Italy, and were traditional from the earliest appearance of the Commedie dell' arte. Thus, the father, Pantaloon, a Venetian merchant, the doctor, a lawyer or professor from learned Bologna, and Brighella and Harlequin, Bergamasque servants as stupid as the corrupt or saucy maid-servants and lovers from Rome and Tuscany were sharp. Lance and Speed in "Two Gentlemen of Verona" are good specimens of these characters. The merchant and the doctor, called in Italian "the two old men," always wore a mantle. ”

“ The ten towns alluded to were Verona, Padua,{88} Vicenza, Treviso, Brescia, Feltre, Belluno, Parma, Modena, and Lucca, and had Mastino but been contented with this ample heritage, his dominion would in all probability have been more firmly established. His craving to add to his state, and convert it into a united kingdom, led however to the downfall of his house. The jealousy of one or two powerful neighbours was aroused; and a sense of the danger about to spread from Verona and envelop the North of Italy became patent to all. ”

“ Oig goes on his way to get a dagger, with which he returns to the ale-house, and stabs Harry who is three parts drunk. Being tried for murder, he is condemned and executed.
Two Gentlemen of Vero ́na, a drama by Shakespeare, the story of which is taken from the Diana of Montemayor (sixteenth century) . The tale is this: Protheus and Valentine were two friends, and Protheus was in love with a lady of Verōna, named Julia. Valentine went to sojourn in Milan, and there fell in love with Silvia, the duke’s daughter, who was promised in marriage to Thurio. ”

“ To Milan let me hear from thee by letters
Of thy success in love, and what news else
Betideth here in absence of thy friend; ”

“ It was all deliciously Italian—the mixture of old life and new, the mountebank’s booth (it was hardly more) grafted on the antique circus, the dominant presence of a mighty architecture, the loungers and idlers beneath the kindly sky and upon the sun-warmed stones. I never felt more keenly the difference between the background to life in very old and very new civilisations. There are other things in Verona to make it a liberal education to be born there, though that it is one for the contemporary Veronese I don’t pretend to say. ”

“ Many of the vaulted carriage-ways frame a glimpse of the rushing river which washes the massive foundations of the courtyards, the blue hills and lines of forked battlement.
In Verona one first sees Venetian painting too, on canvases which are to Titian and Tintoretto as the colors of dawn are to those of sunrise, but the glory is in them. The radiant pencil of Paul Veronese was early lost by his birthplace and given to Venice, in illustration of the parable, but even without her most glorious son native art makes a fair show in the picture-gallery and churches. ”

“ The world surely affords room for every body’s talents, would every body that possessed them but think so; and were malice and affectation once completely banished from cultivated society, Verona might be found in many places perhaps; she is now confined, I think, to the sweet state of Venice. ”

“ DA VERONA (1370–1460) , one of the Italian restorers of classical learning, was born in 1370 at Verona, and studied Greek at Constantinople, where for five years he was the pupil of Manuel Chrysoloras. When he set out on his return to Italy he was the happy possessor of two cases of precious Greek MSS. which he had been at great pains to collect; it is said that the loss of one of these by shipwreck caused him such distress that his hair turned grey in a single night. He supported himself as a teacher of Greek, first at Verona and afterwards in Venice and Florence ”

“ There is in them a serious conception as to composition and vigour in the technique that cause one to realise a master’s thought and execution, and to feel what possibilities lay within his grasp when death cut short his career. Nearly all Cavazzola’s work is in Verona, though the National Gallery possesses two examples, and one is to be found at Dresden.
To return to Liberale’s pupils, Francesco Bonsignori, also called Francesco da Verona, is one of the first, being born at Verona in 1455. ”

“ No notice being taken of this appeal, Venice gladly threw in her lot with Florence, and the league between the two Republics was soon after joined by the houses of Este, Visconti, and Gonzago. The league was further strengthened in a strange and unexpected way by Marsilio da Carrara’s desire to unite himself with the other allies against the lord of Verona. This son of the former lords of Padua was keen to expel the Scaligers from his native town, where Alberto della Scala had been appointed governor by his brother Mastino. Alberto, as has been said, lived only for pleasure. ”

“ In many ways Verona is fully as old-fashioned as Venice, but to Andrea the city seemed the personification of all that was progressive, and while the horses were not the gay steeds of the boy's dream, they were really alive, and wonder of wonders, as they drove over the grand arches of the historic structure which bridges the muddy, swirling waters of the Adige, they were suddenly outdistanced by what Pietro pointed out as one of the few automobiles of Verona. ”

“ Meanwhile, though Verona was a city of many trades and professions, and love and death were idle things, yet was there little said of business all these days, and little else done but talk of the two lovers, of whom, indeed, it was true, as it has seldom been true out of Holy Writ, that death was swallowed up in victory. ”

“ It was erected by order of the Venetian Republic in 1497, and is reckoned as one of the loveliest buildings of that time in the North of Italy. It is a pity that a good deal of unnecessary gilding was added in 1873 when the building underwent some restoration. High up on the corner pillar to the left is to be seen a figure in a monk’s dress, which without sufficient warrant is accepted as that of Fra Giocondo; while above are statues of the men who by their learning or deeds have brought celebrity to themselves and to Verona—Catullus ”

“ The reason for this particular tourney was to wipe out a deed of murder, and to obliterate from the minds of the people of Verona the fact that a fratricide and a villain ruled over them. Cansignorio della Scala had laden his soul with the murders of two of his brothers in order to secure the succession to his illegitimate sons Bartolomeo and Antonio. Bartolomeo was beloved by the people, and in all ranks of society his presence was hailed with joy and affection. ”

“ In the centre of the square is a fountain, originally of great antiquity; near by it the market-cross; close to that [Pg 162] a marble column on which once stood the lion of St. Mark, set up by the Venetians when they seized the city, and thrown down when the republic of Venice fell in 1799. Not far from these two pillars is a sort of stone dais beneath a stone canopy, which was the very focus of the historic and municipal life of the place in mediæval days. Here, when Verona was a free city, the capitano del popolo was inaugurated ”

“ I shrank into the shadow and watched you feed the pigeons, and then you had tea on the sunlit side of the Piazza and then you strolled toward the Rialto. I took a gondola to the station and fled to Verona, for I could have no room in your tenth Eden. Verona is the very place for a bachelor, which, I there discovered, I have never ceased to be. Verona belongs to Romeo and Juliet, and no other lovers may do more than pass the day there, salute and speed on to Venice. ”

“ She accepted the offer of a hired assassin to remove the pretender from her path, and when he was soon after poignarded in the streets of Mantua (1529) , she clenched matters by condemning the dead man’s son, Brunoro, to be imprisoned for life in the fortress of Famagosta.
For over two centuries no movement of political importance stirred the even tenor of life at Verona. A terrible plague in 1630 swept away more than half the population, and reduced the number of inhabitants, it is said, from over 50,000 to barely 20,000. ”

“ Its age must for ever remain a mystery; the only certainty on that point being that it is very great. Some writers declare that it dates from the time of Diocletian only, and ask how is it likely that a mere Roman colony should boast a stone amphitheatre when the capital itself was lacking in such a possession? It may be answered that other towns of less importance than Verona, colonies too of Rome, were provided with arenas, some indeed grander and more elaborate than the Veronese one. ”

“ Ezzelino, a small, pale, wiry man with terror in his face and enthusiasm for evil in his heart, lived a foe to luxury, cold to the pathos of children, dead to the enchantment of women. His one passion was the greed of power, heightened by the lust for blood. Originally a noble of the Veronese Marches, he founded his illegal authority upon the captaincy of the Imperial party delegated to him by Frederic. Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Feltre and Belluno made him their captain in the Ghibelline interest, conferring upon him judicial as well as military supremacy. ”

“ This water supply is probably obtained from one of the great thermae or baths of the Romans, and is surmounted by a statue in Greek marble known as “Madonna Verona.” According to an inscription now preserved in the Museo Lapidario this statue was placed in its present position in the days of the Emperor Theodosius (380) by the Consul Valerius Palladio. The motto in “Madonna Verona’s” hands is: “est justi latrix urbs haec, et laudis amatrix,” and was put there after the peace of Constance in 1183, the year in which Verona was declared free. ”

“ The great Republic, ever since she had become possessed of Treviso, had watched with a jealous eye any increase of dominion on the part of her neighbours. In an ill-advised moment for herself, she coveted property on the mainland, forgetful that her strength and wealth sprang from the sea, and in that quarter only should she have concentrated all her energies. The proclamation of the Carraresi as lords of Verona filled the Venetians with envy, and determined them to secure so fair a possession for themselves. ”

“ The Byzantines seem to have been too lazy to have put their stones together; and, in general, my first impression on coming to Verona, after four months in Venice, is of the exquisitely neat masonry and perfect feeling here; a style of Gothic formed by a combination of Lombard surface ornament with Pisan Gothic, than which nothing can possibly be more chaste, pure, or solemn. ”

“ There is a legend in Verona that after the murder of the Bishop and the Papal excommunication Mastino II. never shewed his face again even to his faithful and beloved wife Taddea da Carrara. This legend may arise from the fact that the equestrian statue over his tomb is represented with the visor drawn—a proof, it is said, of the desire he had to veil himself from every eye, and to prevent everyone, even after death, from gazing on his features. ”