Free The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare

had explored it. After Proteus’s “My shame and guilt confounds me” [5.4.77] Barry Lynch left a colossal pause, showing Proteus considering the possibility of conning Valentine again, before finally resolving on genuine repentance. If the audience hesitated slightly as to the genuineness of the repentance—and Lynch’s smirk was so beguiling that one had to have a moment’s pause—it was Silvia’s silent intercession, a calm gesture of moving towards Proteus, that reassured them. Her judgement that this man was worth forgiveness justified Valentine’s generosity, a symbolic act of love and respect for Silvia as much as of friendship for Proteus. Such work, accepting the play’s difficulty, was as honest and intelligent as one could wish for. 53
    Robert Smallwood describes how, in Edward Hall’s production,
    The journey of the play was marked by two single gender, non-sexual embraces: at the end of the first scene by a valedictory hug of separation, expected all through the scene, between the leading men, Proteus and Valentine; at the end of the last scene, by an embrace of welcome and union, expected all through the scene, between the leading women, Julia and Sylvia. The embraces framed the intervening account of the awkwardnesses and inadequacies of the play’s heterosexual relationships. 54
    Alastair Macaulay analyzed the leading performances perceptively, again highlighting their youth:
    Four little-known young actors are given important breaks in the leading roles. Of these, the most completely successful is Poppy Miller as Silvia, who brings bite, freshness, interest to every least episode she is given. As Proteus, Dominic Rowan starts coolly but well, and with charm; later, when losing his cool, he becomes somewhat too emphatic to convince. Tom Goodman-Hill develops the opposite way as Valentine: beginning rather stiff and tepid, he acquires, when in adversity, a wonderful stillness and quiet philosophical authority that helps to explain the emotional wisdom with which he resolves the play’s climax—forgiving Proteus and even offering to give up Silvia—with such brisk simplicity. Lesley Vickerage, though lacking edge, is a Julia of beauty and vulnerability. 55
    Of Fiona Buffini’s 2004 production, Michael Billington argued that,
    Without overplaying the point, Buffini also suggests that there is a homoerotic twist to this tale of love and betrayal in which the caddish Proteus attempts to steal his best friend’s girl. When Laurence Mitchell’s Proteus and Alex Avery’s Valentine initially part, you half expect them to indulge in a farewell kiss. And later, when Valentine shockingly says to Proteus “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee,” you realise this is a world in which male bonding counts for more than hetero urges. What is usually seen as a trial run for the later comedies here becomes an intriguing study of what Rene Girard called “triangular desire,” in which two men are indissolubly linked by their desire to possess the same woman. Buffini implies all this with grace and wit. And, even if she strangely bungles the classic scene in which the eloping Valentine is caught with a telltale rope ladder, she brings out the extent to which the women become bemused spectators of laddish love-games. Rachel Pickup’s excellent Silvia has a touching vulnerability as she is cast adrift wearing little more than a Freudian slip and Vanessa Ackerman movingly suggests that Julia’s passion for Proteus is sadly misplaced. 56
One Man and His Dog
    However much or little critics enjoy the performances of the two pairs of lovers, though, it must be said that there is one double-act that never fails to delight. Shakespeare’s plays are often recalled in the popular imagination by some special character, for example the ghost in
Hamlet
or the Witches in
Macbeth. The Two Gentlemen
has a dog. The play’s two comedians Speed and Lance/Launce are admirably contrasted. Speed, as his name implies, is all