Anchor ads are not supported on this page.

4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs

The Two Gents Template

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

If you didn’t know who wrote it, you’d swear the author of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, currently at the Old Globe, stole every Shakespearean device he could find.

Two Gents is “early” Shakespeare. The year 1594 gets most mention. In his excellent Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate speculates that young William began his career in the theater as an actor and script-doctor. He revised scenes, kicked-up flagging dialogue, all the while dreaming not of the stage but of becoming England’s next great poet.

In this sense, Two Gents reads like a demonstration piece for an advanced course in playwriting. Shakespeare obviously passed the test. Two Gents also reveals, as the Bard says elsewhere, “the baby figure of the giant mass of things to come at large”: techniques and devices he’ll use again and again.

Sponsored
Sponsored

1.) The Best Young Friends: Proteus and Valentine are inseparable, like twins, until separated by love — of the same woman. In The Winter’s Tale, when they were boys, King Leontes of Sicilia and King Polixenes of Bohemia “were as twinned lambs.” Leontes’ unwarranted jealousy shatters their “eternal” bond. This pattern extends to betrayals in general and even to questioning notions of permanence.

2.) Odd Lover Out: Two men fall for the same woman, which evicts a second woman from the man she loves: poor Julia, in love with Proteus in Two Gents, dazed Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Odd Lover Out lets the playwright range through love’s many ways economically. Having young lovers heightens the emotions and the sudden turns, and may even explain how they can be so forgiving when the smoke clears.

3.) Leave Home and Grow Up: Very few of the comedies stay where they start. In Two Gents, Valentine’s become “dully sluggardized” at Verona. He goes to Milan to broaden horizons. Sometimes called the “withdrawl and return” pattern, Shakespeare sends his characters away from their homeland, usually to flee an unjust law or ruler. They’re somehow transformed when they return. The new geographical perspective often facilitates the change, as Tom Waits sings, “Never saw the East Coast, ‘till I moved to the West.”

4.) Forests of Transformation: Nature often rectifies urban wrongs. Valentine flees from Milan to a nearby forest. He runs into outlaws who are, in fact, “worthy, civil, full of good” — a la Sherwood Forest. Other examples: a wood near Athens (Midsummer Night’s Dream); the Forest of Arden (As You Like It); Bohemia (The Winter’s Tale).

5.) Clown Scenes as Mirror: Launce talks malapropisms in Two Gents and his shenanigans underline the main plot. Jump to Dogberry in Much Ado and many others.

6.) Woman Disguised as a Man: Julia in Two Gents (who ponders wearing a codpiece); Rosalind, As You Like It; Viola, Twelfth Night; Portia, The Merchant of Venice. A favorite of Elizabethan theater, Shakespeare uses it as a cloaking device. The cross-dresser is, in a way, invisible. Like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn at the funeral, she has a privileged, behind-the-scenes view. Also, since women weren’t allowed to act in Shakespeare’s day, a young man played the woman. So every word carried several possibilities, all at once. They say that in the next hundred years, what we call writing will have poly-dimensional levels and layers, hypertexts, sprocketing points of view — like playing a 12 dimensional game of Tic Tac Toe.

There are more devices in Two Gents. Right now someone’s probably writing a dissertation on the Escape With A Rope Trick (“Neo-Penumbrative Shadings and Hempish de-Litteration in the Young-Ish Shakespeare”): Valentine in Two Gents; Portia in Merchant of Venice; Romeo.

But these show that, for someone expected to produce at least two plays a year, Shakespeare had a ready rolodex of devices, to draw from and fiddle with, from the start.

Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

Reader 1st place writing contest winner gets kudos

2nd place winner not so much

The Two Gentlemen of Verona

If you didn’t know who wrote it, you’d swear the author of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, currently at the Old Globe, stole every Shakespearean device he could find.

Two Gents is “early” Shakespeare. The year 1594 gets most mention. In his excellent Soul of the Age: A Biography of the Mind of William Shakespeare, Jonathan Bate speculates that young William began his career in the theater as an actor and script-doctor. He revised scenes, kicked-up flagging dialogue, all the while dreaming not of the stage but of becoming England’s next great poet.

In this sense, Two Gents reads like a demonstration piece for an advanced course in playwriting. Shakespeare obviously passed the test. Two Gents also reveals, as the Bard says elsewhere, “the baby figure of the giant mass of things to come at large”: techniques and devices he’ll use again and again.

Sponsored
Sponsored

1.) The Best Young Friends: Proteus and Valentine are inseparable, like twins, until separated by love — of the same woman. In The Winter’s Tale, when they were boys, King Leontes of Sicilia and King Polixenes of Bohemia “were as twinned lambs.” Leontes’ unwarranted jealousy shatters their “eternal” bond. This pattern extends to betrayals in general and even to questioning notions of permanence.

2.) Odd Lover Out: Two men fall for the same woman, which evicts a second woman from the man she loves: poor Julia, in love with Proteus in Two Gents, dazed Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Odd Lover Out lets the playwright range through love’s many ways economically. Having young lovers heightens the emotions and the sudden turns, and may even explain how they can be so forgiving when the smoke clears.

3.) Leave Home and Grow Up: Very few of the comedies stay where they start. In Two Gents, Valentine’s become “dully sluggardized” at Verona. He goes to Milan to broaden horizons. Sometimes called the “withdrawl and return” pattern, Shakespeare sends his characters away from their homeland, usually to flee an unjust law or ruler. They’re somehow transformed when they return. The new geographical perspective often facilitates the change, as Tom Waits sings, “Never saw the East Coast, ‘till I moved to the West.”

4.) Forests of Transformation: Nature often rectifies urban wrongs. Valentine flees from Milan to a nearby forest. He runs into outlaws who are, in fact, “worthy, civil, full of good” — a la Sherwood Forest. Other examples: a wood near Athens (Midsummer Night’s Dream); the Forest of Arden (As You Like It); Bohemia (The Winter’s Tale).

5.) Clown Scenes as Mirror: Launce talks malapropisms in Two Gents and his shenanigans underline the main plot. Jump to Dogberry in Much Ado and many others.

6.) Woman Disguised as a Man: Julia in Two Gents (who ponders wearing a codpiece); Rosalind, As You Like It; Viola, Twelfth Night; Portia, The Merchant of Venice. A favorite of Elizabethan theater, Shakespeare uses it as a cloaking device. The cross-dresser is, in a way, invisible. Like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn at the funeral, she has a privileged, behind-the-scenes view. Also, since women weren’t allowed to act in Shakespeare’s day, a young man played the woman. So every word carried several possibilities, all at once. They say that in the next hundred years, what we call writing will have poly-dimensional levels and layers, hypertexts, sprocketing points of view — like playing a 12 dimensional game of Tic Tac Toe.

There are more devices in Two Gents. Right now someone’s probably writing a dissertation on the Escape With A Rope Trick (“Neo-Penumbrative Shadings and Hempish de-Litteration in the Young-Ish Shakespeare”): Valentine in Two Gents; Portia in Merchant of Venice; Romeo.

But these show that, for someone expected to produce at least two plays a year, Shakespeare had a ready rolodex of devices, to draw from and fiddle with, from the start.

Comments
Sponsored
Here's something you might be interested in.
Submit a free classified
or view all
Previous article

San Diego's Uptown Planners challenged by renters from Vibrant Uptown

Two La Jolla planning groups fight for predominance
Next Article

Reader 1st place writing contest winner gets kudos

2nd place winner not so much
Comments
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed Big Screen — Movie commentary Blurt — Music's inside track Booze News — San Diego spirits Classical Music — Immortal beauty Classifieds — Free and easy Cover Stories — Front-page features Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts Feast! — Food & drink reviews Feature Stories — Local news & stories Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore From the Archives — Spotlight on the past Golden Dreams — Talk of the town The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it Letters — Our inbox Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news News Ticker — News & politics Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated Poetry — The old and the new Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers Reading — The hunt for intellectuals Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds SD on the QT — Almost factual news Sheep and Goats — Places of worship Special Issues — The best of Street Style — San Diego streets have style Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves Theater — On stage in San Diego this week Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads Your Week — Daily event picks
4S Ranch Allied Gardens Alpine Baja Balboa Park Bankers Hill Barrio Logan Bay Ho Bay Park Black Mountain Ranch Blossom Valley Bonita Bonsall Borrego Springs Boulevard Campo Cardiff-by-the-Sea Carlsbad Carmel Mountain Carmel Valley Chollas View Chula Vista City College City Heights Clairemont College Area Coronado CSU San Marcos Cuyamaca College Del Cerro Del Mar Descanso Downtown San Diego Eastlake East Village El Cajon Emerald Hills Encanto Encinitas Escondido Fallbrook Fletcher Hills Golden Hill Grant Hill Grantville Grossmont College Guatay Harbor Island Hillcrest Imperial Beach Imperial Valley Jacumba Jamacha-Lomita Jamul Julian Kearny Mesa Kensington La Jolla Lakeside La Mesa Lemon Grove Leucadia Liberty Station Lincoln Acres Lincoln Park Linda Vista Little Italy Logan Heights Mesa College Midway District MiraCosta College Miramar Miramar College Mira Mesa Mission Beach Mission Hills Mission Valley Mountain View Mount Hope Mount Laguna National City Nestor Normal Heights North Park Oak Park Ocean Beach Oceanside Old Town Otay Mesa Pacific Beach Pala Palomar College Palomar Mountain Paradise Hills Pauma Valley Pine Valley Point Loma Point Loma Nazarene Potrero Poway Rainbow Ramona Rancho Bernardo Rancho Penasquitos Rancho San Diego Rancho Santa Fe Rolando San Carlos San Marcos San Onofre Santa Ysabel Santee San Ysidro Scripps Ranch SDSU Serra Mesa Shelltown Shelter Island Sherman Heights Skyline Solana Beach Sorrento Valley Southcrest South Park Southwestern College Spring Valley Stockton Talmadge Temecula Tierrasanta Tijuana UCSD University City University Heights USD Valencia Park Valley Center Vista Warner Springs
Close

Anchor ads are not supported on this page.