On Shakespeare’s “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”: An Evaluation of the Love (or Lack Thereof) Within and What it Means for Modern Audiences

My professor didn't like this paper, but I do. Perhaps you will too. Either way, comments are welcome.

            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).

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.