Love and Comedy in Verona
The Ridiculous Lovers in Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona
Two Gentlemen of Verona provides comic subplots based on love, alongside the more serious romances of the main characters.
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is not exactly a romantic comedy, but it certainly spends a lot of time playing with different ideas of love. Romantic love, comradely love, comic love and affected love are presented alongside one other for the audience’s entertainment and judgement.
Alongside the ecstatic romantic love of characters like Julia, Proteus and Valentine, The Two Gentlemen of Verona offers parodic versions of passion. Thurio’s unsuccessful love for Silvia is used as a chance to poke fun at all the ridiculous conventions of romance in the Renaissance. Proteus advises him to write love poetry “til your ink be dry, and with your tears/ Moist it again”, and to follow up these “dire-lamenting elegies” with serenades under her window, singing “a deploring dump” to a “sweet consort” of musicians. (III.2)
Thurio dutifully follows this advice, appearing a scene later with a group of minstrels in tow. This pedestrian approach to love marks most of his romantic activity: when Proteus is planning to convince Silvia of Valentine’s unworthiness, Thurio worries that “as you unwind her love from him...it should ravel and be good to none”, so asks that Proteus praise him at the same time. (III.2)
Thurio’s practical attitude apparently leads to his downfall with Silvia. When threatened with violence by Valentine, he gives her up, declaring that “I hold him but a fool who will endanger/ His body for a girl that loves him not.” (V.4) The Duke judges that this proves Thurio was never worthy of Silvia – “The more degenerate and base thou art/ To...leave her on such slight conditions”, and that Valentine has proved himself to be a true lover.
The other ridiculous lover, Launce, also has distinctly unromantic tendencies. His love soliloquy declares that he is in love with a milkmaid, who “hath more qualities than a water-spaniel”. In trying to make a decision about his courting, Launce has drawn up a list of the beloved’s virtues and vices. (Sit-com afficionados may remember an episode of Friends in which Ross drew up a similar list about Rachel. It didn’t go well in that instance either.)
The list is hardly the stuff of love sonnets, either: “She can spin”, “She can wash and scour”, “She doth talk in her sleep.” “She hath no teeth.” (III.1) Shakespeare is clearly mocking the fashion for the “blazon”, a love poem in which the attributes of the beloved are itemised and lavishly praised. His own sonnet “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun” is based on a similar conceit.
Both Thurio and Launce are mocked in The Two Gentlemen of Verona for indulging in the forms and conventions of love without the sincerity which raises them from the ridiculous to the sublime. Poking fun at these lesser bumbling amorists justifies the excesses which Julia, Valentine and Proteus commit in the name of love.
