THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA by William Shakespeare

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THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA (William Shakespeare)
by Dr. Joseph Suglia

Perhaps the first of the Shakespearean comedies, and doubtless the least-performed and least-read, is The Two Gentlemen of Verona (circa 1590?).  Even the bardolaters seem embarrassed by the play, and it is not difficult to see why.  There are very few memorable lines.  (Some exceptions: “Truly, sir, I think you’ll hardly win her” [I:i]; “In love, who respects friend?” [V:iv].)  Groan-inducing clichés about love that were commonplace even in Shakespeare’s time: “Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all” [I:ii]; “Love is blind” [II:i].  Inhumanly sudden changes of heart (I will return to this problem below).  A parade of puns, all of them halting and limp.  Some interesting canine imagery (man is a dog)–the play has more to do with Dog than with God.  To summon forth Harold Bloom, little of the “hearing-oneself-speak” that gives depth to Shakespeare’s more human inventions.  When the characters do listen to themselves speak, it is strange that they don’t burst into laughter.  (One remarkable exception: Act Two, Scene Six.)

Valentine and Proteus are the Veronese aristocrats of the title.  Valentine is the loverboy.  Proteus is the rake.  Valentine is the constant one.  Proteus, as his name implies, is inconstant (“Proteus,” of course, refers to the god of mutability).

Here is the logic of desire in The Two Gentlemen of Verona:

Valentine desires Sylvia, a Milanese lady.  Sylvia desires Valentine.  Julia, a Veronese lady, desires Proteus because Proteus “despises” Julia [IV:iv].  Proteus no longer desires Julia because Valentine does not desire Julia.  Proteus desires Sylvia because Valentine desires Sylvia.

Let me pause over this final proposition.  Proteus desires Sylvia because Valentine desires Sylvia.  Proteus states this clearly:

Is it my mind, or Valentinus’ praise,
Her true perfection, or my false transgression,
That makes me reasonless to reason thus?
She is fair; and so is Julia that I love–
That I did love, for now my love is thaw’d;
Which like a waxen image ‘gainst a fire
Bears no impression of the thing it was [II:iv].

Julia, his first love in the play, might be a melting wax figure, but so, too, will Sylvia be.  Proteus will exchange Sylvia for Julia in the final act of the play and assert that both are equally beautiful, that Sylvia is not more beautiful than Julia.  One woman is interchangeable with any other, one woman is exchangeable for any other (according to Proteus).  Proteus declares Julia dead not once, but twice–the second time, Julia listens to the man she loves declaring her dead–because of the protean character of (his) desire, the inconstancy of (his) desire.  The image that love produces is a melting wax figure or an ice-image dissolving into water [III:ii].  If one woman is as good as any another, for Proteus, it is very likely “Valentinus’ praise” that incites Proteus’ desire for Sylvia, not any of Sylvia’s intrinsic qualities.

If anything, the play is suggesting that heterosexuality is a modification of homosexuality, not the other way around.

And what if this were the case?  What if homosexuality were not a deviation from the norm of heterosexuality?  What if heterosexuality were a deviation from the norm of homosexuality?  What if men desired women not because of women’s intrinsic beauty or favour (Shakespearean for “charm”)?  What if men desired women because women are desired by other men?  What if desire for the beloved were mediated by the desires of others for the beloved?

If this were the case, then heteroerotic desire would be fundamentally homosocial.

The play concerns the war between Eros (other-sexual desire) and Philia (same-sex friendship), and it is male Philia that wins out in the end.

As the passage cited above suggests, Proteus desires simulations of women more than he desires women in the flesh.  In our cybernetic culture, Proteus would be a pornography addict.  Consider the fact that Proteus is more amorous of Sylvia’s portrait than he is of Sylvia-in-the-Flesh.  Consider the fact the Proteus asks for an image of Sylvia–an image to which he can masturbate.  Much like Diana, Goddess of the Hunt, Sylvia can never be apprehended in her divine nudity.  The goddess is impalpable and divinely invisible–what Proteus-Actaeon sees is only the human shape that she assumes.  (Shakespeare’s text supports this equation–at one stage, Sylvia is described as the “Queen of the Night,” which is one of Diana’s appellations.)

Not merely is Proteus a rake.  We learn early on that he is a blockhead, as well.  In his discourse with Valentine’s servant Speed:

“The sheep for fodder follow the shepherd; the shepherd for food follows not the sheep” [I:i].

Of course, this is a specious, merely colorable argument.  The sheep do not follow the shepherd for food.  They can eat it from the ground.  The shepherd follows the sheep.  The shepherd tends the sheep because he wants to shear the sheep, eat the sheep, sell the sheep’s meat, sell the sheep’s wool, or befriend the sheep.

THE SHAKESPEAREAN CIRCUIT

The most remarkable aspect of the play is what I call the “Shakespearean Circuit” or the “Loop of Desire.”  It functions in this manner: 1.) A giver gives a gift to a recipient.  2.) The recipient returns the gift to the giver.  3.) The gift is now directed at the giver, not the recipient.

Here is the first instance of the Shakespearean Circuit in The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Valentine (very reluctantly) writes a love letter on behalf of Sylvia.  The letter, Sylvia tells Valentine, is intended for one of her suitors.  Valentine presents the letter to Sylvia.  Sylvia returns the letter to Valentine.  The letter that Valentine wrote on Sylvia’s behalf is now addressed to Valentine.

This is how the Circuit works in this context: 1.) A lover writes a letter on behalf of his beloved–a letter that is addressed to the lover’s rival.  2.) The beloved returns the letter to the lover.  3.) The letter is, then, addressed to the lover, not to the lover’s rival.

Here is another example of the “Shakespearean Circuit”: Julia gives Proteus a ring.  Proteus asks Julia, when she is disguised as a man, to give the ring to Sylvia, which she never does.  Julia returns the ring to Proteus.  End of circuit.

The Loop of Desire is not endemic to this particular play–one can find the Shakespearean Circuit in much of the dramatist’s work (e.g. The Merry Wives of Windsor).  One character gives his desire to another character–and this expression of desire ends up being directed to the giver, not the intended recipient.

*****

I mentioned in the introductory paragraph that the characters of The Two Gentlemen of Verona have “inhumanly sudden changes of heart.”  Some instances of this:

A band of outlaws accosts Valentine and his page in a forest.  Thirty-two lines later–may the reader count them–the outlaws coronate Valentine, making him their king!

Proteus attempts to ravish Sylvia.  Valentine frustrates the ravishment before it is accomplished.  Twenty-three lines later–may the reader count them–Valentine forgives the would-be rapist and then just as quickly offers him his fiancée!

Even Shakespeare’s idolaters cannot ignore the slipshod construction of The Two Gentlemen of Verona.  Unless the play is intended as a spoof (and not merely a “comedy” in the Shakespearean sense), it is indefensible.  Then again, one of the play’s leitmotifs is metamorphosis, which might also explain why the valiant Sir Eglamour rescues the fair damsel Sylvia and then runs away comically as the bandits come near.

Shakespeare is both the most overestimated and the most underestimated writer in the English literary canon.  If one takes The Two Gentlemen of Verona in isolation, one can only conclude that it was written by an unworthy versifier and not by a major poet whose talent exceeds that of Andrew Marvell.  Its virtues are meager in comparison with the theatre of the great Scandinavian, Ibsen, and of the great Russian, Chekhov.  It is time to explode the myth that Shakespeare was always a great writer, when, in plays such as this, he is an unimaginative, fatuous hack.  A poet, yes, but a poet with the soul of an entertainer.

Joseph Suglia

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An Analysis of THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (Shakespeare) by Dr. Joseph Suglia

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An Analysis of THE COMEDY OF ERRORS (Shakespeare)

by Dr. Joseph Suglia

Shakespeare’s shortest and dumbest play, The Comedy of Errors (circa 1594) concerns identical-twin brothers who are separated in a shipwreck and their servants who, incredibly, are also identical twins.  The shortest and the dumbest play, yes, and also the most infantile thing the Swan of Avon ever composed.  Nauseatingly and horrifically infantile in three senses of the word “infantile”: 1.) It belongs to Shakespeare’s infancy as a dramatist.  2.) It contains scatological humor and slapstick violence.  Only stupid people, infant infants and adult infants, find scatological humor and slapstick violence diverting.  The comedy is designed for those who find something intrinsically funny about a harlequin being beaten by an unforgiving master.  3.) The play lacks eloquence in the same way that infants lack eloquence.

It is also Shakespeare’s most Aristotelian play, slavishly obeying, as it does, Aristotle’s unities of time and place.  The entire comedy takes place uninterruptedly in the span of one day and unfolds at a frenetic velocity.  Antipholus of Syracuse comes to Ephesus to find his brother and his mother.  There, he is confused with Antipholus of Ephesus.  Hilarity ensues.

The comedy has Plautine origins and perhaps owes some of its buffoonery to the Commedia dell’arte.  The plot is largely derived from Plautus’s Amphitruo, where a master and his servant are locked out of the house while the wife entertains Jupiter and Mercury, disguised as her husband and his servant, respectively, and the Menaechmi, with its two sets of twins.

A second literary source is likely St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians.  Ephesus was, at the time that St. Paul composed his epistle (circa 100 CE), in the thrall of Artemis (Diana, Goddess of the Hunt).  Shakespeare’s audiences would not have been unaware of St. Paul’s condemnation of the witcheries of Ephesus.  One can hear resonances of St. Paul’s apotropaisms in Antipholus of Syracuse’s words:

They say this town is full of cozenage; / As nimble jugglers that deceive the eye, / Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind, / Soul-killing witches that deform the body, / Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks, / And many such-like liberties of sin [I:ii].

Shakespeare’s revision lent itself easily to stupid Broadway musicals and even sillier off-Broadway burlesques.  The Digital Theatre recently performed a slaphappy version of the play for digital children, and that is the ideal public for this awful play.  Add meows and barks and moos and other animal sounds and kitschy songs, and you have a farce.

* * * * *

A question taxes first-time readers of the erroneous comedy: Why are both of the merchant’s sons given the same name, Antipholus?  And why are their servants, who are also twins, given the same name, Dromio?

Aegeon, father to the Antipholuses, describes the event of his wife’s pregnancy and the double birth of his sons:

There had she not been long but she became / A joyful mother of two goodly sons; / And, which is strange, the one so like the other / As could not be distinguish’d but by names [I:i].

If the twins could only be distinguished by their names, why, then, are they both named Antipholus?  One explanation is that they were given separate names, but were confused in the storm.  Both parents took each twin for Antipholus and Dromio, respectively (what the “other” names are, we will never know).

However, this hypothesis falls to pieces when we consider Aemilia’s story in the one-scene fifth act.  She claims that “rude fishermen” from Corinth took “Dromio” and her son from her.  They were then brought to Ephesus by Duke Menaphon, uncle to Duke Solinus.  “Antipholus of Ephesus” and “Dromio of Ephesus” were infants at the time of their separation from their mother.  How, then, does Antipholus know that his name is “Antipholus”?  And how does Dromio know that this name is “Dromio”?

There is an even more vexing improbability: Are we credulous enough to believe that both sets of twins would appear in the same town on the same day wearing exactly the same hairstyles and outfits?

Yet another taxing improbability: Antipholus of Syracuse has been searching the world for his brother and his mother.  Surely Aegeon told Antipholus of Syracuse that his son is a twin.  If the Ephesians greet Antipholus of Syracuse “as if [he] were their well-acquainted friend” [IV:iii], shouldn’t he have been able to figure out that his twin brother is in Ephesus?

The plot is so confusing that it might be helpful to list the confusions:

1.)    In the marketplace, Antipholus of Syracuse mistakes Dromio of Ephesus for his own servant.  The master asks the servant what the latter has done with his money.  The Ephesian Dromio urges Antipholus of Syracuse to come home for dinner and is viciously beaten.

2.)   Adriana, wife to Antipholus of Ephesus, accuses Antipholus of Syracuse of having “strumpeted” her.  The Syracusan Antipholus is uncomprehending, having only been in Ephesus for two hours, and does not know who she is.

3.)   Luciana, sister to Adriana, commands the Syracusan Dromio to bid the servants to set the table for dinner.  Dromio of Syracuse, of course, has no idea what she means.

4.)   Dromio of Syracuse locks out Antipholus of Ephesus (and his servant) from his own home.

5.)   Luce (also known as “Nell”), wife to Dromio of Ephesus, mistakes Dromio of Syracuse for her husband.

6.)   Luciana is courted by Antipholus of Syracuse.  Luciana believes, mistakenly, that Adriana’s husband is flirting with her.

7.)   Angelo, Ephesian merchant, gives a necklace to Antipholus of Syracuse, who accepts it with bemusement.  Later, Angelo will demand payment for the necklace from Antipholus of Ephesus.  Angelo, as it turns out, is in debt and in danger of being imprisoned for his debtorship.  (Though “debtorship” does not appear in Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, it was used by George Meredith.)

8.)  Aegeon mistakes his Ephesian son for the other, etc.

Ephesus is a town in which everyone is strange to Antipholus of Syracuse.  Ephesus is a town in which Antipholus of Syracuse is a stranger to himself.  Doubled, he does not know himself.  The Comedy of Errors is a prototype to The Tempest: Both plays are about self-alienation and self-loss.  Ephesus seems a magical land where no man is his own, where no woman is her own.  The play hints at the impossibility of self-ownership and self-mastery:

He that commends me to mine own content / Commends me to the thing I cannot get. / I to the world am like a drop of water / That in the ocean seeks another drop, / Who, falling there to find his fellow forth, / Unseen, inquisitive, confounds himself. / So I, to find a mother and a brother, / In quest of them, unhappy, lose myself [I:ii].

One drop of water in the ocean in which he nearly drowned, Antipholus of Syracuse is neither unique nor the master of himself.  This is why Adriana, the wife of his Ephesian double, asks him: “How comes it now, my husband, O, how comes it, / That thou art then estranged from thyself?” [II:ii].

The Comedy of Errors suggests that to be oneself is to be another person, that selfhood is not identity.

Is this why neither Antipholus of Ephesus nor Antipholus of Syracuse seem very happy to meet each other the end of play?

Dr. Joseph Suglia

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