(3) The Two Gentlemen of Verona

This play, for me, was an exploration on the sometimes absurd and destructive nature of lusty, romantic love. In this play, two gentlemen (and another guy) vie for a single woman’s love, and do all sorts of crazy, bizarre stuff in the process. This idea is most clearly presented at the end where (I’m not kidding), in less than 25 lines, one character threatens to rape his best friend’s true love, is admonished, apologizes, and then is quickly and completely forgiven by said best friend. That qualifies as crazy, right?

Because of this bit of wackiness (and others bits too), this play has been derided by critics over the years. Many have noted that the abrupt, contrived nature of the end (and the abrupt and contrived nature of the other bits) indicates a lesser play. Perhaps. However, if you view things, including the ending, through this “crazy love” lens, then one can argue that this often-maligned ending is just reinforcement for this theme, and that the characters, true to this theme, are only behaving as they should: recklessly and without reason.

In this way, it was a good read. However, like The Comedy of Errors, I wasn't totally blown away by this one either. I think I agree that Shakespeare seems to still be honing his craft in these early comedies (especially in terms of producing these things for the stage and not just creating them as written works). But, like I referred to earlier, bad for Shakespeare is actually pretty good, relatively speaking…or at least full of enough good so as to be time well spent.