THE HISTORY OF THE PLAY

The Two Gentlemen of Verona was one of Shake'speare's earliest comedies, written in or about 1591, though not printed, so far as we know, until it appeared in the folio of 1623. It may have followed close upon Love's Labour's Lost, or, as many critics believe, The Comedy of Errors may have come between. The earliest reference to it that has been found is in Meres's list of 1598, in which it is the first of the six comedies mentioned. The play is well printed in the folio, and the textual difficulties are comparatively few.

THE SOURCES OF THE PLOT

Some of the incidents in the plot are identical with those in the Story of the Shepherdess Felismena in the Diana Enamorada of Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese poet and novelist (though this romance was written in Spanish), who was born in 1520. The Diana was translated by Bartholomew Yong (or Young) as early as 1583, though his version was not printed until 1598. The tale appears to have been dramatized in 1584 in the History of Felix and Philomena, acted at Greenwich. Shakespeare may also have drawn some material from Bandello's novel of Appollonius and Sylla (translated in 1581) and from Sidney's Arcadia. He was, however, but slightly indebted to any of these sources, and some of the coincidences that have been pointed out may be accidental.

GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE PLAY

Hanmer, and after him Upton, thought the style of the play so little like Shakespeare's general dramatic manner that they were confident "he could have had no other hand in it than enlivening, with some speeches and lines thrown in here and there," the production of some inferior dramatist, from whose thoughts his own are easily to be distinguished, “as being of a different stamp from the rest;" but this view was refuted by

Johnson, and has been rejected by all succeeding critics. On the contrary, as Verplanck remarks, "The play is full of undeniable marks of the author in its strong resemblance in taste and style to his earlier plays and poems, as well as in the indications it gives of his future power of original humour and vivid delineation of character. It, indeed, has the characteristics of a young author who had already acquired a ready and familiar mastery of poetic diction and varied versification, and who had studied nature with a poet's eyes; for the play abounds in brief passages of great beauty and melody. There are here, too, as in his other early dramas, outlines of thought and touches of character, sometimes faintly or imperfectly sketched, to which he afterwards returned in his maturer years, and wrought them out into his most striking scenes and impressive passages. Thus, Julia and Silvia are, both of them, evidently early studies of female love and loveliness, from the unpractised 'prentice hand' of the same great artist who was afterwards to portray with matchless delicacy and truth the deeper affections, the nobler intellects, and the varied imaginative genius of Viola, of Rosalind, and of Imogen. Indeed, as a drama of character, however inferior to his own after-creations, it is, when compared with the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, superior alike in taste and in originality. As Mr. Hallam justly observes, it was probably the first English comedy in which characters are drawn ideal and yet true;' although, when contrasted with