Love and Friendship in Verona
The Unromantic Comedy of Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona
Though often called a romantic comedy, Two Gentlemen of Verona stresses the bonds of male friendship over love, and calls out for a feminist reading.
The Two Gentleman of Verona is often regarded by critics as a romantic comedy – indeed, it may be Shakespeare’s earliest attempt at the genre. Both traditional critics like Peter Alexander, and more modern editors, such as Gary Taylor, locate it within the romantic comedy tradition which Shakespeare would continue developing to such effect in plays like Twelfth Night, As You Like It and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Romantic comedy is a broad genre, however, and though The Two Gentlemen of Verona ends with the settling of differences and preparations for marriage, it is not a wholehearted celebration of romantic love. In the last scene, Valentine gives up Silvia to Proteus, despite the latter’s treachery. However, he doesn’t do so because he recognises that his friend loves Silvia more than he does, but rather “that my love may appear plain and free.” (V.4) The love he refers to is not his attachment to Silvia, but to Proteus, the friend he loves despite his betrayal.
Recognising this shifts the assumptions we make about the marriage in prospect at the end of a comedy. In this play it does not affirm the power of romantic love, and its ability to make demands above those of family, friends and class (as tragedies such as Romeo and Juliet might, or arguably Much Ado About Nothing.) Instead the marriage is given as a gift by one male character to another, demonstrating how the bonds of male friendship and camaraderie come above those between men and women.
As Taylor notes in his preface to The Two Gentlemen of Verona (in the Oxford Complete Works), there is a long tradition of tales in which male friendship transcends attachments to women. This appears subtly in the reconciliation between the protagonists in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale, and more blatantly in tales such as Amaris and Amadace. The extremely effective love poetry and expressions of romantic emotion by Proteus and Valentine only serve to heighten the drama of such emotions being denied in favour of the greater call of male friendship. The more audiences appreciate lyrical passages such as “What light is light, if Silvia be not seen?” (III.1) and “What is Silvia?” (IV.2), the more impressive the marriage appears as a gift from Valentine to Proteus. From this angle a feminist reading of the play is almost unavoidable.
In fact, the marriage is a second-hand gift. Though Valentine resigns “All that was mine in Silvia” (V.4), he doesn’t have the right to marry her at the time. It is not until later in the same scene, when the Duke declares “Take thou thy Silvia, for thou hast deserv’d her” that Silvia is Valentine’s to dispose of in a more practical sense. And he does, so telling Valentine that “our wedding day shall be yours”. Instead of breaking the bonds between father, lover and friend, Silvia is passed around as a token that rewards the worth of each man, and guarantees their continuing acceptance of each other within the structures of male companionship and patriarchy. For a romantic comedy, it’s a pretty unromantic ending.
