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Sir Thomas Elyot and the Integrity of the Two Gentlemen of Verona

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Ralph M. Sargent
Ralph M. Sargent*
Affiliation:
Haverford College Haverford, Pa.
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Extract

Dr. Johnson said of The Two Gentlemen of Verona: “When 1 read this play I cannot but think that I discover both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakespear.” But this play has since fared ill with the critics. Ignored by Coleridge, it was passed off noncommitally by Hazlitt with a few quotations from Speed and Julia. The depreciation of the play for various kinds and degrees of ineptness and obtuseness by such observers as Dowden, Chambers, G. P. Baker, Quiller-Couch, Dover Wilson, Tannenbaum, Charlton, and Van Doren, has tended to obscure its true import. Even the well-intentioned defenses of W. W. Lawrence, Alvin Shaler, and S. A. Small have not been able to reinstate Two Gentlemen into a position of genuine significance in Shakespeare's development.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 65 , Issue 6 , December 1950 , pp. 1166 - 1180
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1950

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References

1 Shakespeare's Problem Comedies (New York, 1931), p. 24; Shakespere's Silences (Cambridge, 1929), pp. 16-18; “The Ending of The Two Gentlemen of Verona”, PMLA, xlviii (1933), 767-776.

2 Two Gentlemen, New Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1921), pp. xviii, 102.

3 See O. J. Campbell, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Italian Comedy”, Studies in Shakespeare, Milton and Donne (New York, 1925), pp. 54-55.

4 For a detailed study of the friendship theme in English literature of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, see Laurens J. Mills, One Soul in Bodies Twain: Friendship in Tudor Literature and Stuart Drama (Bloomington, Ind., 1937).

5 De Amicitia, ed. W. A. Falconer, Loeb Library (New York, 1927), p. 130.

6 Donald Stauffer, Shakespeare's World of Images (New York, 1949), p. 38.

7 See D. T. Starnes, “Shakespeare and Elyot's Governour”, Univ. of Texas Studies in English, No. 7 (Austin, 1927), pp. 112-132. Although Starnes indicates Shakespeare's probable indebtedness to The Governour in 2 Henry IV, Henry V, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus, he does not mention Two Gentlemen.

8 References are to The Boke named The Gouernour, ed. H. H. S. Croft (London, 1883).

9 See e.g., Campbell, op. cit.

10 Mills (p. 407) remarks on the similarity of this passage in Elyot to the gesture in Two Gentlemen, not realizing, evidently, that the whole story is closely related to Two Gentlemen. Lawrence, p. 24, suggests the Titus and Gisippus story in Boccaccio as an analogy to parts of Two Gentlemen. Had he scanned the Elyot version of the story with Shakespeare in mind, he could not have failed to see the much closer relationship.

11 A. Hilka and W. Sôderhjelm, edd. (Heidelberg, 1911), p. 5.

12 See J. H. Herrtage, The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, EETS (London, 1879), pp. 196-205.

13 Both are printed in H. G. Wright, Early English Versions of the Tales of Guiscardo and Ghismonda and Titus and Gisippus from the Decameron, EETS (London, 1937). It is clear that neither Elyot nor Shakespeare owes anything to these “poetic” versions of the tale.

14 John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. R. L. Poole (Oxford, 1902), pp. 332-333; and A. Feuillerat, Documents relating to the Office of the Revels in the Time of Queen Elizabeth, W. Bang, xxi (Louvain, 1908), pp. 270,276. It is extremely unlikely that Shakespeare knew the Latin schoolboy play; but by date and subject matter the English play may well have been of first-rate importance in the writing of Two Gentlemen. Lacking the play itself, we can say only that it suggests an intermediary source between Shakespeare and Elyot; but even so, considering Shakespeare's established knowledge of Elyot, it remains more than likely that he also went directly to Elyot for source material for Two Gentlemen.

15 C. T. Goode, “Sir Thomas Elyot's Titus and Gysippus”, MLN, xxxvii (1922), 1-11.

16 See Mills, pp. 317-319.

17 Faerie Queene, iv, x, 27.

18 Two Gentlemen, ii, iv, 197-199. The first words of 197 are corrupt; cf. New Cambridge ed., pp. 79-80.

19 This dramatic declaration occurs only in Elyot's version of the story. The similarity between Valentine's forgiveness and renunciation, and certain passages in the Sonnets (notably 40-42), has often been remarked, e.g., by A. C. Bradley, Lectures in Poetry (London, 1909), p. 335, and R. M. Alden, The Sonnets of Shakespeare (Boston, 1916), pp. 108-112; but both these critics fail to appreciate the force of the friendship ideal and conventions accepted in both instances. For an informed discussion of this point, see Mills, pp. 239-247, and notes on pp. 434-435.

20 In the original the fulfilment of the offer is achieved by means of the bed trick. When the lady, and subsequently her family, learn the truth about the substitution, they arouse the whole local population in protest. It is interesting to notice that Shakespeare, who does not use the bed trick in this play, introduces it into Measure for Measure, where it does not occur in his sources. Could his sense of thrift have caused him to carry this over from Elyot to Measure for Measure? In that case, the bed trick there, as in All's Well, could be attributed to Boccaccio.

21 How different is all this from Montemayor! There, Julia's prototype has to kill two of three men who are engaging her fickle lover in deadly combat, before he recognizes her devotion to him.