To "love you 'gainst the nature of love" (On "The Two Gentlemen of Verona")

The big thing that everyone always wants to discuss in "The Two Gentleman of Verona" is its misogyny. And it's there, hoo buddy is it there! How many times can one play express that when women say "no," they really mean "yes?" We should make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot whenever a man says that women never say what they really mean, or whenever Proteus betrays somebody new. We'd all be drunk by the end of Act 2. (But really, doesn't Valentine perform the worst betrayal in the entire play when he gives his own beloved to Proteus after Proteus just tried to rape the poor woman? I can't smack my forehead hard enough.)

There is the question, of course, of whether or not this is Shakespeare's very first play, or at least his first comedy. It would go a long ways towards explaining its clunkiness, and the many stereotypes it relies on for its gags. Many scholars use that explanation to excuse the Bard's dreadful mining of stock character types and strong-arming of characters into marriages with distasteful matches. He was a man of his time, regardless of those who would claim him a proto-feminist. He did reserve his highest praise and most erotic poetry for men, after all.

So it's a difficult play to perform for an audience, because it's just so difficult to justify the ending. (Anybody else just want either Silvia or Julia to end up with Sir Eglamour? Just me?) But in a way, that's unfortunate, because some of Shakespeare's poetry in "Two Gentlemen" positively glitters.

When Valentine discovers the joys and penances of love, he both groans and delights in telling his friend:

"Ay, Proteus, but that life is alter'd now:
I have done penance for contemning Love,
Whose high imperious thoughts have punish'd 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.
O gentle Proteus, Love's a mighty lord,
And hath so humbled me, as, I confess,
There is no woe to his correction,
Nor to his service no such joy on earth.
Now no discourse, except it be of love;
Now can I break my fast, dine, sup and sleep,
Upon the very naked name of love." (II.iv.)

Who has loved that has not felt that all-consuming need that devours your attention, keeps you from sleep and food, and tosses you from joy to sorrow and back again in an instant? And Valentine's love is requited, so his pains are not those of a rejected suitor, but simply those of a man in love, who can think of nothing other than his beloved. Early though it may be, Shakespeare's verse here shows his talent for slicing right to the truth of earthy emotions and simultaneously exalting them.

In a prose line, earlier, Valentine had mocked Proteus for his own lovelorn behavior, with as clear a portrait of a lovesick youth as any I've ever read:

"Marry, by these special marks: first, you have learned, like Sir Proteus, to wreathe your arms, like a malecontent; to relish a love-song, like a robin-redbreast; to walk alone, like one that had the pestilence; to sigh, like a school-boy that had lost his A B C; to weep, like a young wench that had buried her grandam; to fast, like one that takes diet; to watch like one that fears robbing; to speak puling, like a beggar at Hallowmas. You were wont, when you laughed, to crow like a cock; when you walked, to walk like one of the lions; when you fasted, it was presently after dinner; when you looked sadly, it was for want of money: and now you are metamorphosed with a mistress, that, when I look on you, I can hardly think you my master." (II.i.)

The women, too, know love's whip. Julia describes how the more you seek to ignore love, to dampen it, the more it rages:

"Thou wouldst as soon go kindle fire with snow
As seek to quench the fire of love with words...
The more thou damm'st it up, the more it burns." (II.vii.)

And I think my favorite scene in the entire play is near the beginning, when Julia chases the torn pieces of Proteus' love letter about her windswept courtyard, after ripping it to shreds in a fit of pique. Shakespeare's imagery combines comedy and pathos to create something that we laugh at while all the while we feel the twinge of sweetness as Julia makes her name and Proteus' kiss on the pages:

"O hateful hands, to tear such loving words!Injurious wasps, to feed on such sweet honey
And kill the bees that yield it with your stings!
I'll kiss each several paper for amends.
Look, here is writ 'kind Julia.' Unkind Julia!
As in revenge of thy ingratitude,
I throw thy name against the bruising stones,
Trampling contemptuously on thy disdain.
And here is writ 'love-wounded Proteus.'
Poor wounded name! my bosom as a bed
Shall lodge thee till thy wound be thoroughly heal'd;
And thus I search it with a sovereign kiss.
But twice or thrice was 'Proteus' written down.
Be calm, good wind, blow not a word away
Till I have found each letter in the letter,
Except mine own name: that some whirlwind bear
Unto a ragged fearful-hanging rock
And throw it thence into the raging sea!
Lo, here in one line is his name twice writ,
'Poor forlorn Proteus, passionate Proteus,
To the sweet Julia:' that I'll tear away.
And yet I will not, sith so prettily
He couples it to his complaining names.
Thus will I fold them one on another:
Now kiss, embrace, contend, do what you will." (I.ii.)

This is one of the plays where you can't help but marvel at the combination of events that brought the Bard into being. His roots in his world are evident - the stock characters, the neatly wrapped up parallel marriages, the deeply rooted misogyny. But his ebullient verse exists already as well, shining through the traditional English Renaissance plot like stars in the night sky. His humanity is clear - how else could he write so irrefutably about the feeling of being in love? But his verse reaches so far beyond humankind as to make us marvel. It is perhaps, "a sufficient ransom for offence" (V.iv.).

Lindsey Wochley as Julia in the Utah Shakespearean Festival's 2008 production of "The Two Gentlemen of Verona."