A Green World

Continuing the theme of firsts, 2 Gents probably marks Shakespeare’s first use of what Northrop Frye calls the Green World, in which the setting of the play in a forest or wilderness becomes an important symbolic element of the story: a metaphor for a character's situation and development.

“The forest is where the greatest romantic excess is perpetrated … but it is also the Arcadia where all wrongs are righted.” 

The forest/wilderness is a paradise or refuge:

• Although he was forced into it - and rather to his own surprise, I think - Valentine enjoys his life in the woods
• The exiled Duke (Rosalind’s father) in As You Like It happily lives with his loyal men in the forest of Arden “like the old Robin Hood of England”
• Miranda, raised in isolation on a desert island in The Tempest, has none of the fake and artificial qualities of girls raised at court
• Perdita, the lost princess of The Winter’s Tale, is raised in a rural paradise of shepherds of flowers

The forest is a source of magic/danger:

• Valentine is kidnapped by the outlaws - dragged into his forest life against his will. Outlaws are - by their very name - wild and out of control. And in an out-of-control world, anything can happen. (Like... you might be moved to give up the love of your life to your best friend??)
• In As You Like It's forest of Arden Oliver learns to value his younger brother for the first time when Orlando saves him from death at the hands of a serpent and a lion
• Propsero and Miranda can only survive on their island in The Tempest with the aid and assitance of their non-human companions: the spirit Ariel and the monster Caliban
• The fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream – especially Puck – are alien creatures of the forest, with little or no sympathy for human feelings

The forest is a proving ground for adulthood:

•  Leaving the civilized world (often of a court) and moving into a wilderness is an essential element in the growing up of many Shakespeare characters
• Valentine in 2 Gents clearly learns a lot about leadership and responsibility in his time with the Outlaws
• Rosalind – and all the younger generation – endure hard times in the forest of Arden in As You Like It before returning, wiser and more mature, to their rightful places
• In Hamlet, the title character’s time with the pirates serves the same symbolic purpose. He returns to Denmark in Act 5 a man of deeds, not just words.

• This idea of separation from society as a juvenile in order to return as an adult is one of the ideas explored by Marjorie Garber in her excellent book Coming of Age in Shakespeare

The forest is a place of rebirth or redemption:

• Female characters often die (literally or symbolically) in Shakespeare’s Green World
• Julia swoons as Sebastian and is revived as herself
• The outlaws in 2Gents mention Robin Hood who created “a better kind of society than those who make him an outlaw can produce” (N Frye) Is this to be Valentine’s destiny as the outlaw leader?
• In Cymbeline, Imogen ‘dies’ as Fidele to be reborn as herself
•  When green world is applied to concept of the ‘world of comedy’ and not just a literal forest, then the stories of Hermione, Perdita, Thaisa, Hero and Helena are all linked to Julia’s experience.

Interestingly, in 2 Gents the 'transforming journey by sea' and the 'regeneration in the green world' are separate incidents in the plot. By the time he gets to Hamlet Shakespeare’s acceptance of these crucial rite-of-passage symbols is so strong that he is almost dismissive. Sea change and outlaws come together in one incident offstage as Hamlet’s fiery crucible of change is reported to us only at second-hand through his letter to Horatio.

In essence, the plots of Shakespeare's comedies and romances take young people away from the rigid and stifling society of their elders into a green world, or wilderness where opposing values rule. Having successfully navigated this treacherous yet magical world the young heroes and heroines return to court or city prepared to transform and heal the world their parents left them. 

And who could say that isn't an appropriate message for young people today?

A first time for everything...

If you listen carefully, 2Gents is a play full of echoes. Or... the opposite of echoes? Whatever that first sound is that will reverberate again and again and again.

Many plot and thematic elements first introduced in The Two Gentlemen of Verona are used and developed over and over again in Shakespeare’s mature plays.

Watch for:

The plucky heroine disguised as a boy, taking matters into her own hands.

• Julia in 2 Gents (Note that she calls herself ‘Sebastian’, the name of Viola’s brother in 12^th Night.)
• Rosalind in As You Like It
• Viola in 12^th Night
• Portia (and Nerissa) The Merchant of Venice
• Imogen in Cymbeline

Although Julia is sent by Proteus to Sylvia to further his suit, their relationship ends there. It took a while for Shakespeare to recognize the comic plot potential of having another woman fall in love with his disguised heroine.

• Phebe in As You Like It
• Olivia in 12^th Night

The lover’s ring/lover’s gift

• Julia is finally recognized by Proteus because she accidentally shows him his own ring
• Olivia tries to claim the disguised Viola’s love in 12^th Night by ‘returning’ a ring that Viola never gave her
• Portia and Nerissa – disguised as boys – obtain their husbands’ wedding rings (which they had promised never to give away) as rewards for legal services in Merchant
• Helena claims Bertram with a ring she obtained by disguising herself (not as a boy) in All’s Well That Ends Well
• In Othello the love gift is not a ring but a handkerchief, and Desdemona has no intention of giving it away: it must be stolen from her to set the tragedy in motion

Banishment: separation from everything familiar as a pre-requisite for growing up

• As You Like It
• Hamlet
• Valentine’s lovely little speech about banishment surely prefigures Romeo on the same subject
• Also, Valentine’s lie to the outlaws about the reason for his banishment (to make himself look tougher in their eyes) prefigures what happens to Romeo

The sea as a (hostile) image of separation (and death): geographical impossibilities become thematic necessities in Shakespeare:

• How exactly would you go by boat from Verona to Milan…?
• The separation of the friends is more than geographical
• The reference to Leander and the Hellespont – although dealt with lightly – doesn’t bode well
• The Proteus/Speed dialogue of “ship” and “sheep” – Isaiah 53:6 and the dangers of separation
• Also the final reference, again cloaked in humour, to shipwreck (which Speed will prevent, since he’s destined to hang)
• “throw it thence into the raging sea” Julia
• “and drenched me in the sea, where I am drown’d” Proteus
• Tide and tears: “The tide is now: nay, not thy tide of tears; 580
  That tide will stay me longer than I should.” Proteus, 2.2 and “if the river were dry, I am able to fill it with my tears” Launce, 2.3
• The “seacoast of Bohemia” WinTale
• Prospero’s “island”
• The destruction of the family unit through shipwreck in both 12^th Night and The Comedy of Errors

THE SPRING, THE HEAD, THE FOUNTAIN

"Talent borrows; genius steals" - Oscar Wilde

Except it wasn't called stealing in Shakespeare's day, and everyone did it. No copyright laws! Piracy meant the real thing - on the high seas. And much of that was government-approved :) 

 

Jorge de Montemayor’s Los Siete Libros de la Diana (pub.1559?) – the first “pastoral” novel published in Spain – set off a huge fad for literature set in a highly romanticized countryside. Virtuous shepherds and beautiful shepherdesses frolicked with the occasional (often disguised) noble in a rural Arcadia where real-life farm chores never interrupted the songs, dances and… other activities. The pastoral genre had a huge influence on Shakespeare which can be seen in early (2Gents), middle (As You Like It) and late (The Winter’s Tale) comedies.

Some of the specific parallels between Diana and 2Gents are:

• Felix (Proteus) sends a love letter to Felismena (Julia)
• Felismena pretends not to want the letter, and is annoyed with her maid for bringing it
• Felix is sent away by his father
• Felismena follows him dressed as a boy, and becomes his page
• Felix falls in love with Celia and sends Felismena to her as a messenger
• The climax of the story is a fight in the woods, after which Felix and Felismena are reconciled

Although Shakespeare’s story of Proteus and Julia follows this model quite closely, it was only in later plays that he made use of additional Diana plot elements. There was no Valentine equivalent in Montemayor’s story: Celia (Silvia) falls in love with the disguised Felismena (sound familiar?) but, unusually, given this is a comedy, she dies of unrequited love when Felismena turns out to be a girl.

(Trivia: the ‘magic juice’ Oberon uses on Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is another tidbit probably stolen from Diana.)

Shakespeare added Valentine to the character mix because he was interested in exploring another popular theme of Renaissance literature: the conflict between love and friendship. (This deserves a post all to itself.)

John Lyly’s Endymion, the Man in the Moon (acted at Court by the Children of Paul's, most likely on Candlemas, February 2, 1588) brought the pastoral genre to England, and may also have suggested the love/friendship conflict to Shakespeare. 

In this story, the hero loves the moon goddess Cynthia. His girlfriend Tellus finds out and hires a sorceress to enchant Endymion into a never-ending sleep. Meanwhile, Eumenides – Endymion’s best friend - is in love with a girl who doesn’t love him back. Eumenides travels to a magic fountain which will answer one question – just one… Should he solve his own problem or his friend’s? Friendship wins out over self-interest in the end (as it almost does in that weird plot twist at the end of 2Gents) and he discovers that Endymion’s magic sleep can be ended by a kiss from Cynthia. 

Eumenides wins his chosen girl anyway (the rewards of virtue) and by the end of the story there’s a new boyfriend for the jilted Tellus. Endymion doesn’t get Cynthia, however: as a goddess (standing in for Queen Elizabeth, apparently) she’s unattainable. Sigh.

Lyly’s Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit (1579) adds the element of deception into the friendship/love conflict as the hero meets and secretly woos his best friend’s girl.

In Elyot’s Boke Named The Governour (1531) we may find the seed of the remarkable offer Valentine makes to Proteus at the climax of 2Gents. Gisippus gives up any claim to his fair (yet unnamed) fiancée, handing her over to his friend Titus when he learns of the latter’s desperate, unconfessed (and potentially fatal) attraction to the same girl: “Here I renounce to you clerely al my title and interest, that I now haue or mought haue in the faire maieden.” In order to make good on this offer the two friends (who look like identical twins, apparently) develop a scheme that is a male version of the “bed trick” Shakespeare uses at the end of All’s Well That Ends Well.

Other possible sources for plot and character element in 2Gents include:

The Excellent Comedie of Two the Moste Faithfullest Friendes, Damon and Pithias, Richard Edwards, 1565

The Knight’s Tale in The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer (which some of you may remember was also the source of the love/friendship conflict in Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen)

The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, Sir Philip Sidney, 1590 [Book II]
Flavio Traditio, F. Scala, 1611
Tragedia von Julio und Hyppolita, tr. Georgina Archer