two gentlemen of verona and ashland and play

On a crystal clear summer evening in Ashland, OR (Friday, August 11) as the fading sun cast an irregular shadow on the golden hills East of town, and as the faint noise of the Interstate about two miles away provided a gentle reminder that one wasn't in Paradise, but perhaps only a few miles from Paradise, I saw the rarely-performed Shakespeare comedy Two Gentlemen of Verona. It is rarely performed because it has so many "problems" with it: (1) it is an early Shakespeare comedy, and so the characters are not well-developed and the conversational/interactive structure is simple; (2) the play has some internal contradictions (which Friar was Silvia confessing to, for example) which seem to suggest poor editing; (3) the play has a sudden resolution which strikes a reader as inauthentic and even jarring. Thus, this part of the "canon" is usually ignored, especially since Shakespeare has a good 25 or so "solid" plays that can be expected to entertain, challenge and instruct. Under the skillful direction of Bill Rauch, however, the comedic elements of TG are intensified, the potential internal contradictions ironed out and the final resolution is presented both with skill and even a note of skepticism.

Setting the Context

A play that you attend always has two "contexts"--the action which the play is trying to present and the physical location where you see the play. Here we were in Ashland, the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, where a dozen plays (usually 3 or 4 are Shakespeare's) are presented each year from February to October to hundreds of thousands of delighted visitors. The Elizabethan theater is replete with a covered amphitheater where spectators sit, a rather small stage, with sliding panels at the rear and balconies above, and a three-story facade above the stage, which allows for other scenes requiring a physical distance and elevation between one actor and other performers. High above the facade is a flagpole, and each evening, precisely five minutes before beginning, a solitary window opens on the top floor of the facade, and an actor raises the flag of the theater. The evening is about to start.

When this particular Friday evening performance began, it started with an unusual "context." S's play, with its minimal directions, has two friends, Valentine and Proteus, speaking with each other about love and friendship as the former is finalizing plans to travel to Milan while the latter, chained in love to Julia, stays behind in Verona. Two friends speak, and then one leaves for Milan. But Bill Rauch has made two important decisions here, both of which "work" to an extent, though one is a bit more of a stretch than the other. He has the play begin at an Amish worship service, where the congregation, divided by gender, is singing a hymn without musical accompaniment. This, then, will be the "conservative" community which sends both Valentine and, eventually, Proteus, out to "see" the world. And, he has the play begin in a community, rather than with the conversation of two solitary individuals. I think that Valentine's and, later, Proteus' departure from the community adds a helpful touch to the play, even though the Amish context doesn't fully "work" for me. Granted, Rauch is trying to present the contrast between stodgy Verona and "hip" Milan, but the anachronism of a Protestant sect in a Catholic country, and the world-denying vs. world-affirming attitudes of the two cities, isn't really either necessary or at all hinted at in the text. Indeed, at least one of the servants of Valentine or Proteus uses sexual imagery quite freely, a practice that seems a little out of place with the "tone" that Rauch is trying to set.

Milan, the city where Valentine goes to seek his honor (of course there is a nice irony in the names. Valentine, the honor-seeker, has a name suggestive of love, and he will find love in the city where he seeks honor. Proteus, the seemingly constant lover of Julia, who faithfully stays behind in Verona to attend to her, is, according to his name, a figure who shifts and changes his outward appearance. He will be the changeable one, of course, as the play progresses), is portrayed as a modern resort town, with golfers and croquet-club-swinging people, with massages and sumptuous feasts.

One other context-setting decision by Rauch, which I believed worked wonderfully, was making the "alternative" society into which Valentine was inducted after his banishment from Milan to be a society occupied by chain-wearing, tattoed, spike-hair young people. Their slightly menacing ways, foreign attire, and comedic gestures and mannerisms presented a wonderfully humorous contrast to the "staid" Verona and the "libertine" Milan.

A Word About Friendship and Love

Shakespeare really doesn't develop very deeply what he believes to be the contrasting themes of love and friendship. But he does have many choice lines about love, constancy and friendship throughout the play. Let me close this essay with one. Proteus, true to his name, changes his loves. He throws overboard his love to Julia when his eyes first meet Silvia. He betrays his friend Valentine in order to further his romantic plot to acquire Silvia. Julia, his first beloved, is faithful to him and tries to do everything to regain his affection. In 5.4, she says to Proteus:

"How oft hast thou with perjury cleft the root!
O Proteus, let this habit make thee blush!
Be thou ashamed that I have took upon me
Such an immodest raiment, if shame live
In a disguise of love:
It is the lesser blot, modesty finds,
Women to change their shapes than men their minds."

This notion of Proteus' fickleness transcends the reference only to Proteus because of the last two lines. Women change their shapes in order to win the men who have changed themselves along the way. Women will do almost anything to get a man back whom they love. And, men? Proteus responds:

"Than men their minds! 'tis true.
O heaven! were man
But constant, he were perfect. That one error
Fills him with faults; makes him run through all the sins:
Inconstancy falls off ere it begins."

Men, if we were constant, would be perfect creatures. We have so many other virtues, don't we? We can work hard, and make money, and provide for people and protect people. We can figure out how to do things and make arrangements so that things "happen." We can be passionate and romantic. The only thing that we lack is constancy. "Were man but constant, he were perfect."

Conclusion

And so the two couples end by being devoted solely to each other, Valentine to Silvia and Proteus to Julia. But Director Rauch ends the play on an uncertain note. As the two couples part, they stare sharply at each other. Though the last words are words of oneness, harmony and unity, the last gesture suggests something different. Maybe the audience is to understand that this "drama" is just beginning. In any case, the evening was a double pleasure, not only because we enjoyed such an entertaining presentation of TG, but because TG has now been "rescued" for the Shakespeare canon.

2024