Dusty: 

Now that I have read Act 1, I am sure I have never read this play before. So far, I do not yet find much to engage me. Three short scenes, introducing us to some of the main characters (Valentine, Proteus, and Julia), but not yet to Silvia or Launce. The main topic is young love.

1.1 establishes that Valentine and Proteus, the “two gentlemen,” are fast friends, but are now separating, as Valentine departs for Milan, to “see the wonders of the world” and to hunt after “honor.” Meanwhile, Proteus (does his name suggest that he is protean?) stays home to dote on his love for Julia. I suppose we sense some difference between the two gents, Valentine teasing Proteus as a homebody and besotted lover. I don’t think we yet see any sign of a future conflict between the friends, or a betrayal. My editor (Anne Barton) suggests the play is about love vs. friendship, but so far I don’t see it. The two gents seem to be witty young men, engaging in banter, but I get no sense that they are old and close friends they way Hamlet and Horatio are. I thought it surprising that Proteus engages in the same witty banter with Valentine’s servant. Don’t even witty servants (derived ultimately, I guess, from Roman comedy) know how to behave in the presence of their masters?

1.2 introduces Julia, who engages in witty banter with her waiting -woman, Lucetta. Lucetta is said to be “saucy,” and indeed she seems to forget her station in the rapid-fire exchanges with Julia. Their conversation even falls into rhyme. Shakespeare seems more interested in displaying wit than he does in later plays. The scene suggests that Julia is less ready than Proteus to confirm her love for Proteus publicly. As in the first scene, we have only two characters on stage at a time, and for brief moments only one.

1.3 introduces Antonio, but it’s not yet clear whether he is going to be an important figure in the play. Again, as in 1.2, he asks advice of an inferior, who readily offers it. Antonio quickly agrees. Proteus is now going to be sent off to join Valentine at the Emperor’s Court in Milan. He would just as soon stay home with Julia but doesn’t say anything about that — presumably his father does not know about his love for her. Again just two characters on stage at a time. It’s not yet clear where the play is going: is Proteus going to be torn between his love for Julia and his obedience to his father? There’s still no indication that there will be any conflict between Valentine and Proteus. Quite the contrary.

Maybe the dog, who appears in Act 2, will liven things up.

Michael:

No doubt about it: Two Gents is apprentice work: scenes devoted mainly to witty exchange, and the wit not always as witty as one might wish. And the characters seem a bit interchangeable.

The first act wants to establish the characters and the situation, but doesn’t get us into any plot complications. In fact it’s not until late in Act 2 (end of scene 4 and scene 5) that we get the beginning of the plot of jealousy and betrayal that will shape the overall direction of the play. The play seems to take its time to establish that both of the gents are seriously in love with their respective mistresses. All of the witty servants seem to upstage their masters and mistresses in the exchanges of wit, and as you say, they don’t seem overly deferential to them.

Michael:

In 2.1 it’s striking that Silvia is the one who takes the lead by asking Valentine to write a letter for her — presumably a love letter – that she then returns to him as her sentiments toward him. Perhaps a bit lame as a way of establishing the love direction, but we know of Sylvia’s sentiments.

2.2 is short, but establishes the betrothal of Proteus and Julia; they exchange rings, kiss, and he vows constancy. This, I think, was the near equivalent of a marriage vow, so if Proteus should violate the betrothal, he would be understood as seriously wrong. It may be significant that he doesn’t have much to say as he leaves Julia.

2.3 Now we come to Launce and his dog. Clearly he’s a phlegmatic beast and may be allowed on stage simply because of his calm nature. It’s always theatrical wisdom never to appears in a scene with a dog or a child, but this dog seems unlikely to liven anything up. Will he provide more interest in subsequent appearances? Actually, whatever a dog does on stage, however inconsequential, will prove amusing.

2.4 finally brings on some plot interest, first in Valentine’s exchanges with Thurio, then with Proteus when he enters. Are we to suppose that the Duke is the substitute for the Emperor that we were promised in Milan?  As Valentine and Proteus talk, there can be no doubt of Valentine’s having fallen in love with Sylvia or of Proteus’ recognizing this. In their discourse they have changed places from the first scene, Valentine extravagant in his emotions toward Sylvia and Proteus reserved in his responses. Significantly, Valentine tells Proteus that he and Sylvia are betrothed and discloses the details of their elopement. Then Proteus startles us by his soliloquy confession that he now is taken by Sylvia and that his love for Julia has cooled.

2.5 seems designed to lighten things with banter about Valentine and his alteration. And the dog again accompanies Lance, but to no discernible effect, at least on the page.

2.6 confirms the direction of the plot as Proteus defines the double nature of his betrayal and the three-fold perjury he intends to commit. And he tells what he intends to do to betray Valentine’s elopement plan.

The following scene between Julia and her servant Lucetta is all the more poignant in view of what we’ve just heard. And Julia becomes the precursor of all those heroines who disguise as men in the plan she presses on Lucetta of dressing as a man to travel to Milan to see Proteus.

We know that Valentine’s elopement plans will not work out and that Proteus will turn villain. Act 3 will show us.

Dusty: 

Yes, the first three acts seem to be pretty thin “apprentice work.” What’s more, they don’t give any promise that better work will be forthcoming. It’s as if Shakespeare is writing a play that’s different from his later comedies. He doesn’t seem able to develop his characters, or interested in it. They all behave like conventional scorners of love, or else like lovers. I found myself thinking of mediocre TV sit coms: simply drawn characters, witty banter, lots of laugh lines, mere sketches of “conflict.”

In 2.1 Valentine has been suddenly transformed into a doting lover (like Proteus in Act 1). Speed continues to be as bold and saucy as he was, “chiding” his master that makes him seem more like a stage “clever servant” than a dramatic character. 2.3 might be a funny scene with a good comic actor in the role of Launce, trying to play against a lethargic dog, especially if the dog has a sour face like a bulldog. Shakespeare seems determined to have his characters make witty jokes about everything, including sad departures.

In 2.4 we get three versions of witty banter: between master and servant, between two rivals, and between two friends. But can we really differentiate among the three versions? Later in the scene Proteus is apparently struck with love at first sight (even more suddenly than Valentine has been transformed). I assume that the actor would signal within seconds that he is, as he later says in his monologue/soliloquy, “dazzled” by Silvia’s mere “picture.” We don’t “believe” a bit of it.

2.5 gives us a fourth version of witty banter, this time between two servants. Maybe audiences in the early 1590s were ready to laugh and were happy to keep laughing. 2.6 is more like a real soliloquy, in which Proteus resolves a conflict within himself. But it’s all pretty mechanical, and probably mostly played for laughs.

Maybe because of all the witty banter leading up to it, I did not find 2.7 to be “poignant.” Maybe because I don’t “engage” with any of the characters. Julia resolves to follow Proteus, and we know that’s going to lead to trouble, but it still struck me as Shakespeare merely setting up a “situation.”

Dusty:

In Act 3 we get the Duke of Milan. Yes, he appears to be substituted for the Emperor. (I gather that some editors think Shakespeare nodded, or else that the play was patched.) Proteus loses no time in trying to block Valentine. Again, I imagined I was watching a 16th-century sit com: the Duke pretends to ask Valentine’s wooing advice, and in a contrived bit of stage business puts on Valentine’s cloak, and finds in it Valentine’s love letter to Silvia (a curtailed 10-line sonnet) and even the ladder. The Duke instantly banishes Valentine, who delivers a soliloquy about his love woe, but again makes it sound comical. We get more deceiving when Proteus pretends to help Valentine escape.

Then we get a reprise of 2.5, with more witty jokes and puns between the two servants, and finally (in this very long scene) Launce’s “cate-log” of the virtues and vices of the maid he suddenly loves. The catalog serves as a low parody of the love-rhetoric that Valentine and Proteus have earlier uttered about their beloveds. It is not clear to me why Speed reads it aloud. (Maybe for no other reason than Shakespeare wanted us to read — i.e., hear — it.)

Proteus — living up to his name — continues to be treacherous in 3.2. We get more duplicitous giving of advice (as with Valentine in the previous scene), as this time Proteus advises the Duke about how to get Silvia to hate Valentine and love Thurio, and he also advises the credulous Thurio himself. (Both Duke and Thurio are apparently to be played as standard gulls.) And to top it off, Proteus will undertake the commission himself.

Michael:

The women may be the exception. I persist in finding Julia a somewhat interesting character, even though she’s linked with the odious Proteus. Sylvia is a bit dimmer, but she too at least is loyal.

Yes, the scene with Launce and Speed is pretty lame, as if it had been in Shakespeare’s bottom drawer and just now pulled out to pad out the scene; I don’t know that we had reason to suspect Launce to be in love with anyone but the dog.

Act 4 introduces outlaws, who turn out to be down-on-their-luck gentlemen who are looking for a good-looking commander/king. They’re clearly a plot device to enable the concluding reunion. I think we’ve seen similar pirates in other places.

In 4.2 we get Proteus’ account of Sylvia’s rejection of him that at least keeps her in our graces. The disguised Julia must hear Proteus sing the rather sweet “Who is Sylvia?” song. Though it’s textually unclear, it seems obvious that Proteus is the singer. And it has the expected affect on Julia. Sylvia’s rejection of him in Julia’s hearing makes clear the sentiments of the women. Proteus’ lies about Julia being dead and projecting Valentine’s death keep us from any sympathy for him, which is clearly a major problem in the play. It seems odd that Sylvia would agree to give Proteus her portrait, but perhaps we have to assume a future plot reason.

It seems rather late in the play to introduce another character, Eglamour, but it seems Sylvia needs a guide in her leaving Milan. At least he’s trustworthy, which is clearly to contrast with Proteus.

4.4 gives us a long prose monologue by Launce on and with Crab the dog. It’s clear by now certainly that the dog was comic fill, and it looks as if the dog had been offered to Sylvia in lieu of a small lap dog that was stolen. Hard to imagine Crab as a love token, but that’s the joke of course. Julia must now serve Proteus by delivering the ring that Julia gave him to Sylvia and accepting the portrait of Sylvia. The dialogue between the two, though Julia is still disguised as a boy, is perhaps the best scene in the play, which concludes with Julia taking up Sylvia’s portrait and imagining herself in it instead of Sylvia.

I would blush for suggesting the interest of this play, except that it does show us Shakespeare just starting out, trying various lame comic tricks (like the overly witty servants and the superfluous dog) and trying vainly to create plausible characters.

Dusty:

The play is one of Shakespeare’s weakest, and maybe a sign of his earliest dramatic instincts, but I think we need to read Act 5, which has its own problems as well as some situations that he returns to in later plays.

The women are certainly stronger and more admirable than the men, especially when they are in distress, especially Julia. I think they become more interesting and appealing after Act 2. At the beginning of the play Proteus and Valentine seem unobjectionable, but soon enough both of them decline, Proteus into an inconstant lover and a false friend, Valentine into love woe. I think Proteus loses all of our respect. I don’t think Valentine loses our good will, and regains our admiration in Act 4 — only to blow it in Act 5. The other men are mostly stock figures — the Duke, obstructing and mercenary father of Silvia; Thurio, the rich suitor of Silvia who abandons his pursuit. Eglamour is a curious case, the pathetic suitor who gets Proteus to woo on his behalf and is played for a fool, but is a faithful escort to his beloved when she follows her true love into the woods.

Launce is maybe a special case. Was the part written for a particular comic actor who happened to work with a dog? I think this is the one and only on-stage animal in Shakespeare (not counting the bear in The Winter’s Tale). Maybe he learned his lesson. Launce seems extraneous — do we really need two witty servants? — and the idea that his loyalty to his ungrateful dog at 4.4.29  (“How many masters would do this for his servant”) is like Julia’s loyalty to her ungrateful beloved at 4.4.90 (“How many women would [deliver] such a message [to a rival]”) seems pretty forced.

I was surprised to find out in 4.1 that Valentine had been in Milan for 16 months. Why so long? I agree with you that the latter part of 4.4, between Silvia and the disguised Julia, is the best scene in the play, and seems to be built around genuine feeling. Shakespeare seems interested in the use of a go-between in a wooing situation. Here the disguised Julia acts as her own lover’s faithful agent in wooing another woman. And Proteus acts as Thurio’s unfaithful agent in wooing the woman they both love. The  use of a go-between in Twelfth Night, where the disguised Viola woos Olivia on behalf of Orsino, is better theatre. As is As You Like It, where Rosalind, disguised as Ganymede, teaches Orlando how to woo.

Since at the end of Act 4 Proteus continues to pursue Silvia, who detests him, and Silvia is still being pressed by her father to marry Thurio, the banished Valentine has joined a bad of outlaws, and Julia, pursuing her inconstant lover, has been forced to disguise herself as a boy, Shakespeare has a lot of work to do in order to produce a comic resolution in Act 5. And the final act is very short — only 256 lines — as if Shakespeare couldn’t be bothered to work out a plausible resolution. The first three scenes, taking up only 83 lines, get everybody into the woods. After the pathos of the “Sebastian”/Silvia scene we are back to a comic perspective on the love complications.

In 4.4, although Silvia is rescued from outlaws by Proteus, she professes her continuing love for Valentine and “detests” the “false perjur’d Proteus.” And Proteus virtually becomes a caricature of a villain when he sneers to his old friend, Valentine, “In love/Who respects friend?” and then turns to tell Silvia that he will “force” her to “yield to my desire.” Are we getting ready for an on-stage rape?

Dusty:

When it looks like things can’t get any worse, Valentine, who has stepped aside, now steps up and saves the day. He denounces the treachery of his old friend, whom he will never trust again. We’re still headed for tragedy, but Shakespeare suddenly changes gears: Proteus abruptly and completely repents in a 5-line speech, and Valentine, in a 7-line speech, (he actually completes a line from Proteus’ speech) completely forgives his false friend. No modern audience can believe this. Could an Elizabethan audience suspend disbelief?

What’s worse, Valentine at the end of his speech makes a gift (!) of his interest in Silvia (“all that was mine in Silvia”) to Proteus! If Valentine still has any love for Silvia, why should he do that? Is it because he values his friendship with Proteus more than his love for Silvia? (If the play were produced today, Valentine would be booed off the stage.) Maybe Shakespeare realized he was in dangerous territory, because he now has the disguised Julia faint away.

This shakes things up, and when Julia revives she produces two rings. She says the first ring is the one she meant to give to Silvia. Proteus says the second ring is the one he gave Julia. Why do we need two rings? (A problem we noticed in All’s Well That Ends Well.) Shakespeare now has Proteus execute another 180, by deciding that he’s actually in love with Julia rather than Silvia. Maybe we don’t worry about the implausibility because we know we are in the world of comic fantasy, where anything can happen and everything turns out for the best. Valentine, having moments ago “given” Silvia to Proteus, now gives Proteus and Julia to each other. Why? When he says “‘Twere pity two such friends should be long foes” I at first thought he was trying to say that it’s a pity that two people (“two such friends”) who used to love each other — Proteus and Silvia — should now be apart. But it seems clear to me that he is saying that he is acting so as to bring an end to the enmity between himself and Proteus: handing over Julia to Proteus is a way of confirming  his own friendship with him. Again, this is hard for a modern audience to take: a woman is being used to seal a bond between men.

Proteus says he’s fine with it, and Julia, with three words, says she is too. (They are the last words she speaks in the play.) Apparently she has no real say in the matter. If Valentine is for it, and Proteus is for it, she must go along. (I am reminded of the end of Measure for Measure, when Angelo is married off to Mariana.)

We’re not done. In barges the Duke, with Thurio, and (apparently separately) the outlaws. The outlaws get ready to seize the Duke as a “prize” (for which they will receive ransom), but they are told by Valentine to back off. Then Thurio in effect claims Silvia as his “prize” (“Silvia’s mine”), and Valentine tells him to back off too. When Thurio backs off, I had a mixed response: on the one hand he quickly, and presumably in comic/cowardly fashion, backtracks when challenged. On the other hand, it seems rather sensible to stop pursuing a woman who doesn’t love you — a lesson that Proteus never really learned. So up steps the Duke, and, suddenly “canceling” his “grudge” against Valentine  – in this play almost all the men suddenly change their minds) — gives his daughter to him. Gives! OK, that’s what Elizabethan fathers can do, but it appears to be just one more instance of men treating women as property to be transferred. And what does Silvia say? Nothing — she has no more lines for the rest of the scene and play, and has not in fact spoken since she said “O heaven!” when Proteus threatened to rape her. Maybe somebody should write an essay about “The Silent Woman at the end of Shakespeare’s Plays.”

Still we’re not done, because the outlaws are on stage, and they have not been included in the happy circle of love and forgiveness, so the Duke forgives them, even though Valentine at the beginning of the scene had said they “make their wills their law” and it’s difficult to keep them from committing “uncivil outrages.”

If a director risked putting on the play, I think he/she would either have to play it as cartoon-like make-believe fantasy, or else would want to have the men act like clueless guys who are full of themselves and the women act seriously, and have them roll their eyes in the final scene, and even give each other significant glances, when Valentine and the Duke and Proteus are making everything nice again.

I’ll be interested to hear if you share my view of the last act, or whether you think it works better than I think it does.

Michael:

Yes, Act 5 and the conclusion have serious problems. Can we really believe that Valentine can so quickly forgive Proteus, who has just seemed about the rape Sylvia. He has just said that he can never trust Proteus again. And then he does forgive and gives over all his love and claims to Sylvia to Proteus. Sylvia is silent about this. How is she to accept Valentine after this? And in the discovery of the rings, Proteus is converted back to Julia. The duke gives up on Thurio and accepts Valentine. It’s as if Shakespeare has thrown up his hands and has no idea how else to resolve the play.

I agree that only the women are at all interesting in the play, particularly Julia. But they deserve better.

I agree entirely with your assessment. I can’t imagine an Elizabethan audience being more happy with the ending than we are. Any modern production — and I think the play has been done — would have to seriously modify the ending.