Read Online The Two Gentlemen of Verona by William Shakespeare - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Shakespeare
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forest he took on all the Outlaws at once, and since there were so many of them the textual problem of Silvia’s chivalrous escort taking to his heels ceased to exist. 49
6. Robin Phillips’ 1970 RSC production with Helen Mirren as Julia (here in disguise as the page, Sebastian) and Ian Richardson as Proteus: Mirren was described as “a blonde-wigged tigress” whose “acting shows extraordinary truth and strength” while Richardson’s Proteus was motivated by “the spiteful jealousy of a confused adolescent.”
Stanley Wells found the production “modest, charming, and sensitive to the play’s weaknesses”:
The gentlemen, for once, seem really young, so are more easily forgiven. Peter Land plays an initially soppy Proteus, but finds a way to convey shame and bewilderment at the unexpected shift in his emotions. Peter Chelsom’s engaging Valentine, full of boyish charm and innocence, youthfully pleased with himself, has the right mixture of comedy and romance, and develops into the most interesting character. The moment of his banishment, when he kneels to John Franklin-Robbins’s entertaining, strongly characterized Emperor, introduces a new dimension of seriousness; in the final scene, the genuineness of his concern both for Silvia and Proteus carries us surprisingly well through the notoriously difficult dénouement. 50
Thacker’s production also lent a comprehensible social context to the young men’s behavior in the 1930s “salon society”:
There is a logic to this idiom which emerges clearly on through the horseplay of the two suitors. They are public school types whose relationship, if not overtly sexual, has a competitive closeness. Schoolboy rough-and-tumble lingers on the brink of adult eroticism; a boy’s own complicity is almost confusable with declarations of love. 51
Benedict Nightingale suggests why updated versions of the play should have worked so well:
When lovers appear in doublet and hose, we expect them to behave in conventional romantic ways. Transpose them to places we can more easily associate with youthful skittishness and folly, and they can do things offensive to earnest scholars and yet seem perfectly plausible. Who knows, maybe Shakespeare meant to make romance look silly. Maybe to take liberties with this play is to be truly faithful to it. After all, every era is familiar with Proteus, the young blood who swears eternal love to one woman, then falls for his chum Valentine’s girl, and proceeds to behave outrageously to everybody. At Stratford, Barry Lynch is certainly the kind of intense, secret boy who, with a little sophistry, can convince himself that his feelings are morally paramount. The last scene, with its hurried reconciliations, admittedly poses special difficulties for him, since Proteus must switch from a rapist to a penitent, in what good taste should prevent me calling a flash. Yet among men of a certain age is that really so unlikely? By then the zest and humour of Thacker’s production have anyway swept away most objections. 52
Peter Holland offered a more complex, detailed account of the play’s most difficult moment:
All problems in the play pale into insignificance beside Valentine’s handing over of the nearly raped Silvia to the rapist: “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee” (5.4.83). Thacker’s production, while not making the line unproblematic, offered it as aproblem squarely confronted and tentatively solved. The production had, slowly and thoughtfully. allowed the significance of the women to grow as the play progressed, accepting their rights to decide what happens to them, their ability to initiate action and to actualise a form of friendship that the men talk of but cannot carry through into action. It seemed only logical and fully justifiable therefore to see Silvia resolving the play’s crux … Thacker’s modest and highly intelligent solution reintegrated the moment into the development of the comedy as this production
6. Robin Phillips’ 1970 RSC production with Helen Mirren as Julia (here in disguise as the page, Sebastian) and Ian Richardson as Proteus: Mirren was described as “a blonde-wigged tigress” whose “acting shows extraordinary truth and strength” while Richardson’s Proteus was motivated by “the spiteful jealousy of a confused adolescent.”
Stanley Wells found the production “modest, charming, and sensitive to the play’s weaknesses”:
The gentlemen, for once, seem really young, so are more easily forgiven. Peter Land plays an initially soppy Proteus, but finds a way to convey shame and bewilderment at the unexpected shift in his emotions. Peter Chelsom’s engaging Valentine, full of boyish charm and innocence, youthfully pleased with himself, has the right mixture of comedy and romance, and develops into the most interesting character. The moment of his banishment, when he kneels to John Franklin-Robbins’s entertaining, strongly characterized Emperor, introduces a new dimension of seriousness; in the final scene, the genuineness of his concern both for Silvia and Proteus carries us surprisingly well through the notoriously difficult dénouement. 50
Thacker’s production also lent a comprehensible social context to the young men’s behavior in the 1930s “salon society”:
There is a logic to this idiom which emerges clearly on through the horseplay of the two suitors. They are public school types whose relationship, if not overtly sexual, has a competitive closeness. Schoolboy rough-and-tumble lingers on the brink of adult eroticism; a boy’s own complicity is almost confusable with declarations of love. 51
Benedict Nightingale suggests why updated versions of the play should have worked so well:
When lovers appear in doublet and hose, we expect them to behave in conventional romantic ways. Transpose them to places we can more easily associate with youthful skittishness and folly, and they can do things offensive to earnest scholars and yet seem perfectly plausible. Who knows, maybe Shakespeare meant to make romance look silly. Maybe to take liberties with this play is to be truly faithful to it. After all, every era is familiar with Proteus, the young blood who swears eternal love to one woman, then falls for his chum Valentine’s girl, and proceeds to behave outrageously to everybody. At Stratford, Barry Lynch is certainly the kind of intense, secret boy who, with a little sophistry, can convince himself that his feelings are morally paramount. The last scene, with its hurried reconciliations, admittedly poses special difficulties for him, since Proteus must switch from a rapist to a penitent, in what good taste should prevent me calling a flash. Yet among men of a certain age is that really so unlikely? By then the zest and humour of Thacker’s production have anyway swept away most objections. 52
Peter Holland offered a more complex, detailed account of the play’s most difficult moment:
All problems in the play pale into insignificance beside Valentine’s handing over of the nearly raped Silvia to the rapist: “All that was mine in Silvia I give thee” (5.4.83). Thacker’s production, while not making the line unproblematic, offered it as aproblem squarely confronted and tentatively solved. The production had, slowly and thoughtfully. allowed the significance of the women to grow as the play progressed, accepting their rights to decide what happens to them, their ability to initiate action and to actualise a form of friendship that the men talk of but cannot carry through into action. It seemed only logical and fully justifiable therefore to see Silvia resolving the play’s crux … Thacker’s modest and highly intelligent solution reintegrated the moment into the development of the comedy as this production
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