Read Online The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare - Free Book Online

promises. Snatches of
Love’s Own Sweet Song, Heartache, Love in Bloom
and
The Glory of Love
filled in the message. 38
    Thacker’s was a hard act to follow. Edward Hall’s 1998 production, also in the Swan Theatre, offered more “bright young things” in an up-to-the-minute Italian take on the play, which Russell Jackson described as “
La Dolce Vita
, ca. 1998, rather than
Cavalleria Rusticana
, 1910.” It was a busy production with lots of noise, parties, designer chic, and supernumeraries for doormen, bellboys, and whores, as Jackson went on to elaborate:
    Hall found room for plenty of sharp ideas, some of which established milieu deftly: a gangplank and pre-voyage drinks to send Proteus off to Milan; a bar revealed by folding back the louvered shutters on one side of the back wall; traffic noise and oncoming headlights evoked the outskirts of the city where Valentine meets the bandits; a desolate place for the final scene. 39
    Fiona Buffini’s 2004 production toured in repertory with
Julius Caesar
(not in a double bill though). Michael Billington related the setting to Thacker’s earlier production:
    Like David Thacker a decade ago, Fiona Buffini has set
Two Gents
in the 1930s. But where Thacker beguiled us with pop songs by Gershwin and Porter, Buffini uses the period setting to bring out the high style of Milan, which becomes a fashion-plate whirl of slinky women, brilliantined men, hectic parties and hot jazz. 40
    Patricia Tatspaugh described it as
    Set between the wars, with a successful blending of design and direction, Fiona Buffini’s
Two Gentlemen of Verona
for the RSC’s small-scale tour depicted an autumnal Verona inhabited by English gentry in decline and Milan as the sophisticated social capital of the jazz age. 41
    It is perhaps a reflection of its relatively humble place in the Shakespearean canon that
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
enjoyed the smallest number of performances of any play within the RSC’s Complete Works Festival with a single performance on 27 August 2006 at the Courtyard Theatre. Guti Fraga directed a lively, colorful production in English and Portuguese, which combined the talents of Nós do Morro and Gallery 37.

    5. Fiona Buffini’s 2004 RSC production in the Swan Theatre with Alex Avery (Valentine), Rachel Pickup (Silvia), and Zubin Varla as Turio: Milan became “a fashion-plate whirl of slinky women, brilliantined men, hectic parties and hot jazz.”
Twoness and Twosomes
    The program notes to Edward Hall’s 1998 production argue that “The title of
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
proclaims the play’s thematic interest in ‘twoness’ and its insistence upon the concept of a sense of proper behavior. An intrinsic duality informs the structural pattern.” This is manifested in the two pairs of lovers, two fathers, two comic servants, two rival suitors, even, although we never see Proteus’ “little jewel” (4.4.42), two dogs. A production works dramatically by contrasts and distinctions but must nevertheless find a convincing way to achieve the unity promised in the play’s conclusion, “One feast, one house, one mutual happiness.”
    The two gentlemen have the largest but also the most problematic parts (Proteus 20 percent and Valentine 17 percent). In 1960 Derek Godfrey’s “handsomely Italianate” Proteus was perhaps too well contrasted with Denholm Elliott’s Valentine in a shoulder-length blond wig, “one subtly experienced and the other innocent, solves at a glance any problems raised by their vulnerable friendship. Mr Elliott, indeed, is almost too benevolent, not far from Aguecheek in simplicity [
Twelfth Night
]. In fact his kindly personality makes the robbers’ choice of him as their leader more than usually incredible.” 42 The trickiest moment comes when, having attempted to rape Silvia, Proteus is nevertheless forgiven and offered “All that was mine in Silvia” (5.4.88) by Valentine. John Russell Brown describes this moment in Hall’s