The
Two Gentlemen of Verona, one of William Shakespeare’s very earliest plays, is
a comedy centered mainly around four love interests, whom we will call
protagonists for the sake of a limited vocabulary: Julia, a woman of Verona;
her sworn lover, Proteus (also of Verona); his secondary love interest, Silvia
(a woman of Milan); and her sworn lover, Valentine (Proteus’ closest friend,
also of Verona). Like many of his other plays, Shakespeare has somehow managed
to write a captivating and enjoyable love story about some not-very-likable (or
at least not-very-admirable) lovers. Proteus and Valentine particularly are so
wealthy in faults that I am reluctant to call them lovers at all (Julia is more
virtuous than either of the men, but possesses plenty of faults in her own
right; Silvia, but for a minor detail, I will venture to call admirable, and
perhaps even a lover), and it is for this reason that I say I settle for the
title of protagonist rather than use it freely. Yes, the audience is rooting
for these four characters; but myself at least was rooting for them to mature
and experience an epiphany rather than for them to end up with the objects of
their affections, because it is clear to me as a reader that none of these
people (except perhaps Silvia) is ready for a relationship at all—although, to
be fair, perhaps they deserve each other. My proposition, then, is this, in two
parts: first, that there is no real, true love in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, with the
possible exception of the relationship between Valentine and Silvia; and second, that the false love in The Two Gentlemen of Verona provides none of the benefits of real
love and brings about a myriad of problems and complications, as it serves as a
catalyst for treachery, deceit, and evasion of personal responsibility. We will
also find, I think, that while the social atmosphere of the time and place
where The Two Gentlemen of Verona is
set is indeed particularly conducive to false love relationships, many of the
issues on which it sheds light are still absolutely present in individuals and
relationships in the real world today.
When I say there is no real love in Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona, I do not
say so without reason. Before even examining the psychology of love, emotions,
self-esteem, and relationships, there is a clever clue to this idea in the
literature independent of recent psychological research. Silvia, as can be seen
in numerous examples of writing from Shakespeare’s contemporaries and
near-contemporaries, was often used as a generic name to represent a woman of
romantic interest (Townsend), such as in the aria by Alessandro Parisotti, “Se
tu m’ami, se sospiri” (“If you love me, if you sigh”). In this aria, the singer
is rejecting her suitor’s notion that by accepting his suit she must reject all
others, and refers to herself as Silvia because she is the object of many men’s
affections (“Bella rosa porporina/ Oggi Silvia sceglierà/...Non perché mi piace
il giglio/ Gli altri fiori sprezzerò” (Rolli), or, “The beautiful purple rose/
Will Silvia choose today;/ …Just because the lily pleases me,/ I do not have to
despise the other flowers” (Ezust). By giving the object of Valentine’s,
Proteus’, and Thurio’s love the name Silvia, Shakespeare may well be making his
own clever stab at the superficiality of the love. Certainly as far as Proteus
and Thurio (another of Silvia’s suitors, and the one preferred by her father)
are concerned, Silvia could have been any girl. We have already seen that
Proteus is no stranger to falling for a woman just because she’s a living,
breathing woman (and the qualities of living and breathing do not seem
altogether necessary as he is eventually willing to settle for worshiping a
portrait of Silvia in the case that Silvia herself is unwilling to be the
object of Proteus’ knee-jerk emotional reactions to womanhood: “I am very loath
to be your idol, sir,/ But… your falsehood shall become you well/ To worship
shadows and adore false shapes” (4.2.121-3)), and Thurio gives up his pursuit
of Silvia’s love without argument when it becomes clear that Valentine and
Silvia have chosen each other.
According
to a study linking self-esteem to six different styles of love and
relationships (eros, ludos, pragma, storge, mania, and agape), people who love
erotically and/or ludically are likely to be people with very high self-esteem,
and “[t]he same reasoning should apply in reverse for Mania. In fact, one
reason manic lovers are manic is because
of uncertainty of self in the relationship” (Hendrick). The ability to love
others has long been linked with the ability to love oneself, and although it
is unclear what the causal chain of events is in this correlation, it is
absolutely clear that the correlation exists (Campbell). Of course, it will be
necessary to first define erotic, ludic, and manic love, in order to understand
the implications herein. The aforementioned study measured people of each
love/relationship type by asking subjects to agree or disagree (in degrees)
with seven questions per each of the six love styles (I will here discuss only
the three which are correlated with self-esteem): erotic lovers (associated
with high self-esteem) were likely to agree that chemistry and attraction were
strong from the beginning and remain passionate, that their partners fit their
ideal standards of beauty, and that they and their partners “get,” or
understand, each other to the point that they were meant for each other; ludic
lovers (also associated with high self-esteem) are unlikely to commit or
express a desire to commit, remain mysterious to their partner, keep secrets,
and avoid responsibility in relationships; manic lovers, on the other hand
(associated with very low self-esteem), are likely to agree with the following
statements:
“29. When things aren't right with my lover
and me, my stomach gets upset.
30. When my love affairs break up, I get so depressed that I have even thought of suicide.
31. Sometimes I get so excited about being in love that I can't sleep.
32. When my lover doesn't pay attention to me, I feel sick all over.
33. When I am in love, I have trouble concentrating on anything else.
34. I cannot relax if I suspect that my lover is with someone else.
35. If my lover ignores me for a while, I sometimes do stupid things to get his/her attention back” (Hendrick).
30. When my love affairs break up, I get so depressed that I have even thought of suicide.
31. Sometimes I get so excited about being in love that I can't sleep.
32. When my lover doesn't pay attention to me, I feel sick all over.
33. When I am in love, I have trouble concentrating on anything else.
34. I cannot relax if I suspect that my lover is with someone else.
35. If my lover ignores me for a while, I sometimes do stupid things to get his/her attention back” (Hendrick).
None of our protagonists
possess qualities and/or values for either of the two discussed healthy forms
of love (and you may take my word for it that they do not show particular
proclivity towards storge, pragma, or agape, either). The exceptions to this
are that Proteus chases after two different women over the course of the play
(but his reasons and methods are not indicative of ludic love, rather simply of
being fickle, indecisive, and traitorous), and Silvia, who I will grant does appear
to have more healthy self-esteem than the other characters, and an at least
somewhat ludic style of love (she strings Proteus along writing letters to
himself like a game), but she also seems over-eager to commit to “the one” as a
form of validation. Everyone in love is absolutely more than willing (the word
“pushy” might not be out of place here) to commit, even exchanging rings and
vows of eternal love (2.2.4-12), and going so far as to plan to elope together
after having known each other only a few days. Julia only picked Proteus
because her nurse, Lucetta, recommended him as her favorite of Julia’s suitors,
so it would be inaccurate to acknowledge immediate chemistry, and the same goes
for Proteus and Silvia—when Valentine first pointed Silvia and her beauty out
to Proteus, Proteus refused to acknowledge that she was anything more than
reasonably pretty. Valentine and Silvia might be granted the “ideal standards
of beauty” card but for that Proteus claims that love is blind (or at least
blinding) and Valentine cannot accurately judge Silvia’s beauty because he is
so taken with the glamour he has put on her by means of his superficial love
for her (2.1.43-65). The point I am trying to make here is that none of the
characters can possibly be in “real love” because none of the characters are
secure enough in themselves to do so (Campbell), which, even without refuting
the five healthy forms of love as possibilities, can be more than easily proven
by exemplifying how each of the characters fits the manic model of love (the
model with a direct correlation to low self-esteem).
To prove this, allow me to address the symptoms of manic
love in order, one by one. When Valentine “falls in love” with Silvia, he
becomes melancholy and melodramatic; the thing he calls love has not improved
him but has rather depressed and upset him. He is no longer healthy and
energetic (2.1.15-30). This correlation between physical health and proximity
(both physical and emotional) to one’s lover is a property of manic love (Hendrick).
When Julia, handicapped by her own pride, tears her letter from Proteus into
pieces, she falls to the floor in tears and proceeds down a path of
self-deprecation: “O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!/ Injurious
wasps, …Unkind Julia!/ I throw thy name against the bruising stones,/ Trampling
contemptuously on thy disdain. … mine own name… some whirlwind bear/ Unto a
ragged fearful-hanging rock/ And throw it thence into the raging sea!”
(1.2.105-22) Like so, Julia insults herself several times over and wishes a
series of ills on her name. It is not specified whether she wishes these ills
on her written name only or on herself in actuality, but either way it is fair
to say that Julia fits the description of depression and thoughts of self-harm
listed as being symptomatic of manic love (Hendrick). The third identifying
statement of manic love from Hendrick’s study refers to losing sleep over love,
for which Valentine first makes fun of Proteus: “one fading moment’s mirth
[bought]/ With twenty watchful, weary, tedious nights” (1.1.30-1), and then,
after falling for Silvia, specifically says he does: “[Love’s] high imperious
thoughts have punished me/ With bitter fasts, with penitential groans,/ With
nightly tears and daily heart-sore sighs./ For in revenge of my contempt of
love/ Love hath chased sleep from my enthralled eyes,/ And made them watchers
of mine own heart’s sorrow” (2.4.123-8). It seems unnecessary to address the
fifth identifying statement of manic love, “When I am in love, I have trouble concentrating
on anything else” (Henrick), as it is obvious this applies. The entire play,
insofar as the four protagonists are speaking, revolves around love and love
relationships. It is clear that they can concentrate on nothing else. Julia
“cannot relax [when she] suspect[s] that [her] lover is with someone else”
(Hendrick), and goes so far to calm this upset as to dress in the habit of a
man and travel to Milan to find out what Proteus is up to. It is therefore
apparent that the four protagonists of The
Two Gentlemen of Verona suffer from low self-esteem and an unhealthy class
of love emotions.
Because
of the low self-love these characters demonstrate, and in turn because of the
unhealthy love relationships in which they find themselves, these characters’
faults (some of which are caused by low self-love, and some of which may
encourage it) are magnified ten-fold over the course of the play. A perfect
example, Proteus is the representational epitome of all that is wrong with the
characters in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Many of his faults make
appearances in the other characters, but nearly all the faults of any character
in this play are concentrated in him. The exception is that, misguided as he
is, Proteus is intelligent and quick-witted, a virtue possessed by all in the
play except perhaps Lance, whom I will regard more as a vehicle for comic
relief than as a character in his own right. Proteus does not, however, use his
wit and intelligence to good ends, so perhaps this so-called virtue is better referred
to as cunning and thought of as a fault. Because the love Proteus experiences
is unreal and unhealthy, it moves him to act on his faults rather than his
virtues, and he resolves to “leave [him]self, [his] friends, and all, for love”
(1.1.65). One thing Proteus is very
good at, however, is suppressing what little conscience he does have whenever
it makes a sad attempt at contributing to the plot. Even when Proteus speaks
aloud of his deceits and double-crossing, his confession to the Duke is actually
no more than a device to further his own desires, a deceit to make him look
better, and is carried out for the ignoble cause of winning the hand of a
twice-claimed woman who will not have him. “Thus, for my duty’s sake, I rather
chose/ To cross my friend,” he confesses to the Duke, Silvia’s father
(3.1.17-8), when he reveals Valentine’s plan to elope with Silvia that night.
To be fair, Valentine is also going against the wishes of the Duke her father,
but Silvia herself is head-over-heels in her consent and their love seems more
genuine than any other relationship in the play (though for reasons mentioned
earlier I will not grant that it is true love, no matter how much the lovers
themselves would have me believe it is so), so however deeply Valentine may be in
the wrong, Proteus is infinitely more deeply so. It may just be that the only
honest remark Proteus makes out loud to another character is when he tells the
Duke, Silvia’s father, that he himself is “undeserving” of the gracious favors
the Duke has bestowed upon him (3.1.7).
Still,
even the Duke, desiring only to marry his daughter to a man he deems worthy and
thus protect her (an altogether noble cause), is not immune to lying and
deceiving others to reach his desired ends. After Proteus informs him of Valentine’s
plan to steal away with Silvia in the night and elope, the Duke intercepts
Valentine and begins to fabricate a tale of some “lady of Verona” who is
supposedly staying in Milan and will not accept the Duke’s advances upon her.
This provokes an instance of something that happens throughout the whole play:
Valentine insists that the invented lady of Verona is simply playing hard to
get, that “If she do chide, ‘tis not to have you gone,” and instructs the Duke
to “Take no repulse, whatever she doth say:/ For ‘Get you gone’ she doth not
mean ‘Away’” (3.1.98,100-1). The situation with the lady of Verona may have
been hypothetical as far as the Duke was concerned, and simply a vehicle for
discovering Valentine’s treachery against him, but it is very concerning that
Valentine would take that attitude towards consent, which brings us to
Valentine’s faults.
Valentine has a clearly very shallow view of love
considering that he thinks he is neck-deep in it. He refuses to understand that
the woman actually has a point of view, feelings of her own, and a say in
matters. The women in the play do not exactly propitiate the idea that no means
no, as Julia says that “maids, in modesty, say 'no' to that/ Which they would
have the profferer construe 'ay'” (1.2.55-56), and, to be fair, this is a
miscommunication that still occurs even today because of a lack of willingness
from both men and women to either communicate clearly and/or to reliably
interpret anything less straightforward than a flat “yes” or “no” with eye
contact (Hess). However, Valentine nevertheless displays an absolute immersion
in rape culture and the belief that ‘no’ means ‘yes’ with his advice to the
Duke and his behavior towards Silvia later in the play. Valentine furthermore,
when first pointing Silvia out to Proteus upon Proteus’ arrival at the court of
Milan, refers to Silvia as “a heavenly saint… divine,” and begs of him, “O
flatter me; for love delights in praises” (2.4.138-42). This request serves to
demonstrate only that Valentine is indeed deceived by the glamours his own love
or imitation thereof places on Silvia’s countenance, and that he is willingly
submitting himself to the deceit because it is pleasant, and provides a form of
instant gratification and shallow satisfaction.
Regarding women, particularly Julia: the fact of the
matter is that Julia is in love with a man who would falsely swear unto her,
leave her for another woman (who does not even care for him), and betray his
best friend; she is indubitably foolish, but she at least is mostly virtuous.
This creates a strange juxtaposition of virtue and deceit, however, since so as
to maintain her virtue (virginity and thus fidelity), she must take part in a
deceit of her own: she refuses to travel to Milan in the habit of “a woman, [in
order to] prevent/ The loose encounters of lascivious men” (2.7.40-1), and so
she takes on the appearance of a pageboy. Even a deceit such as this, in which
she partakes for safety, security, and virtue (unlike Proteus’ deceits, which
are false acts for false ends), Julia is worried will tarnish her good name
(2.7.61).
But still, these motions she makes and the trouble she
takes is all for the love of a man who is completely unworthy and undeserving.
Even if he were truly in love with Julia, he is dishonorable in his show of it.
Then, when he does make mistakes (there is no want of examples), Proteus
repeatedly refuses to take responsibility for his actions, blaming them instead
on the force of love itself. When he first hears that Julia has refused his
advances, he blames the messenger, and resolves that he “must go send some
better messenger./ I fear my Julia would not deign my lines,/ Receiving them
from such a worthless post” (1.1.140-1). As he is contemplating a plan of
action for how best to win the hand of Silvia, he says to himself, “To leave my
Julia shall I be forsworn;/ To love fair Silvia shall I be forsworn;/ To wrong
my friend I shall be much forsworn./ And e’en that power which gave me first my
oath/ Provokes me to this three-fold perjury./ Love bade me swear, and love
bids me forswear” (2.6.1-6). As if it were not enough to call love the cause of
his own faults, Proteus then continues to blame love directly as if it were a
self-governing, autonomously active force: “O sweet-suggesting love, if thou
hast sinned/ Teach me, thy tempted subject, to excuse it” (2.6.7-8).
None of this would be so bad if it were all for the sake
of story, as watching other people suffer in rhyme does tend to make for good
entertainment, but the behaviors demonstrated by these characters do not stop
at the edge of the stage. Even today in the United States, where women have (on
paper, at least) equal rights to men, there is still the social construct that
women play hard to get, and it’s not helped by the fact that many women do play hard to get. However, the few
times that a woman’s flirtatious “no” means “I want you to ask again” do not
make up for the great majority of the time when “no” actually means “no.” It
also does not help that we have created a culture in which saying “no” directly
is considered offensive, and because people have been conditioned to protect
themselves from offense by sheltering what little self-esteem they have instead
of actually embarking upon a journey of self-improvement in response to constructive
criticism, to avoid offending people we are urged by society to find less
direct and more polite ways of saying “no” (Hess).
Thus, the best way to read The Two Gentlemen of Verona is not as entertainment, but rather as
a warning. Readers ought to be horrified that a character as virtuous and
clever as Julia would have so little self-love and such low self-esteem that
she would accept without hesitation when
Proteus realizes his mistake and proposes to return to her. Audiences ought to
be disgusted at the culture that shames clear communication in favor of a game
that has always been dangerous physically and psychologically and is now
dangerous legally. More than simply being horrified and disgusted, I would hope
that readers and audiences would step back and look at their own lives, and
honestly evaluate just how exciting a Shakespearean romance it would make
(hint: if Shakespeare has written about your relationship or something like it,
re-evaluate your current life path).
Works
Cited
Campbell, W.
Keith, Craig A. Foster, and Eli J. Finkel. "Does Self-love Lead to Love
for Others?: A Story of Narcissistic Game Playing." Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology 83.2 (2002): 340-54.PsycARTICLES.
Web.
.
Ezust,
Emily, and Paulo Antonio Rolli. "If You Love Me, If You Sigh (Rolli, Set
by Alessandro Parisotti, Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
(misattributed), Corona Elisabeth Wilhelmine Schraeter." The Lied,
Art Song, and Choral Texts Archive. N.p., Sept. 2003. Web.
.
Hendrick,
Clyde, and Susan Hendrick. "A Theory and Method of Love." Journal
of Personality and Social Psychology 50.2 (1986): n. pag. PsycARTICLES.
Web.
.
Hess,
Amanda. "Why Rape Isn’t One Big Misunderstanding." The Sexist
RSS. Washington City Paper, 24 Mar. 2010. Web.
.
Rolli, Paulo Antonio. "Se Tu M'ami, Se
Sospiri." Ed. G. Schirmer. Twenty-Four
Italian Songs and Arias (of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries): Medium
High. By Alessandro Parisotti. Hal Leonard Pub. Coporation: n.p., 1948.
68-71. Print.
Shakespeare,
William, Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, Katharine Eisaman
Maus, and Andrew Gurr. The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The
Norton Shakespeare. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. 111-57. Print.
Townsend,
Judith. "Voice Lesson: Parsing "Se Tu M'ami"" Personal
interview. Oct. 2009.
