Part 19 (1/2)
”Self-har jealousy! fie, beat it hence!”
In the second scene of this second act Adriana goes on nagging in almost the same way
In the second scene of the third act there is a phrase from the hero, Antipholus of Syracuse, about Adriana which I find significant:
”She that doth call me husband, even my soul Doth for a wife abhor!”
There is no reason in the co words Most men would be amused or pleased by a woman who makes up to them as Adriana makes up to Antipholus I hear Shakespeare in this uncalled-for, over-emphatic ”even my soul doth for a wife abhor”
In the fifth act Adriana is brought before the Abbess, and is proved to be a jealous scold Shakespeare will not be satisfied till soreat person of Adriana's own sex has condemned her Adriana admits that she has scolded her husband in public and in private, too; the Abbess replies:
”And thereof came it that the man was mad”
And she adds:
”The venom cla's tooth”
Again, a needlessly emphatic condemnation But Adriana will not accept the reproof: she will have her husband at all costs The whole scene discovers personal feeling Adriana is the portrait that Shakespeare wished to give us of his wife
The learned coly conspired to say as little about ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” as possible No one of theonist, Valentine, with Shakespeare, though all of them identified Biron with Shakespeare, and yet Valentine, as we shall see, is a far better portrait of the master than Biron This untimely blindness of the critics is, evidently, due to the fact that Coleridge has hardly mentioned ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and they have consequently been unable to parrot his opinions
”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is manifestly a later work than ”Love's Labour's Lost”; there is more blank verse and less rhy Julia, for example, is individualized and lives for us in her affection and jealousy; her talks with her maid Lucetta are taken frohtful talks between Portia and Nerissa, and e_ of the Princess and her ladies in ”Love's Labour's Lost,” where there was no attempt at differentiation of character It seems indubitable to me that ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is also later than ”The Comedy of Errors,” and just as far beyond doubt that it is earlier than ”A Midsuht's Dream,”
in spite of Dr Furnival's ”Trial Table”
The first three comedies, ”Love's Labour's Lost,” ”The Comedy of Errors,” and ”The Two Gentleht they throw on Shakespeare's early life
In ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” Shakespeare makes similar youthful mistakes in portraiture to those we noticed in ”Love's Labour's Lost”;of hi of the play the only difference between Proteus and Valentine is that one is in love, and the other, heart-free, is leaving hoo to Milan In this first scene Shakespeare speaks frankly through both Proteus and Valentine, just as he spoke through both the King and Biron in the first scene of ”Love's Labour's Lost,”
and through both AEgeon and Antipholus of Syracuse in ”The Comedy of Errors” But whilst the circuinary and fantastic, the circumstances in ”The Two Gentlemen of Verona” are manifestly, I think, taken froue between Valentine and Proteus I hear Shakespeare persuading hiard this assumption as far-fetched, but it will appear the ue is studied Valentine begins the argu youth have ever homely wits,”--
he will ”see the wonders of the world abroad” rather than live ”dully sluggardiz'd at ho out ”youth with shapeless idleness” But all these reasons are at once superfluous and peculiar The audience needs no persuasion to believe that a young o to Court Shakespeare's quickspirit is in the lines, and the needlessness of the argument shows that we have here a personal confession Valentine, then, mocks at love, because it was love that held Shakespeare so long in Stratford, and when Proteus defends it, he replies:
”Even so by Love the young and tender wit Is turned to folly; blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime, And all the fair effects of future hopes”
Here is Shakespeare's confession that his e had been a failure, not only because of his wife's mad jealousy and violent temper, which we have been forced to realize in ”The Co ways threatened to dull and i line I find not only the music of Shakespeare's voice, but also one of the reasons--perhaps, indeed, the chief because the highest reason--which drew him from Stratford to London And what the ”future hope” was, he told us in the very first line of ”Love's Labour's Lost” The King begins the play with”
”Let Fame, that all hunt after in their lives”
Now all men don't hunt after fame; it was Shakespeare who felt that Fame pieced out Life's span andShakespeare who desired fame so passionately that he believed all othera forecast of capacity, as, indeed, it usually is If any one is inclined to think that I a conjecture let him re after honour
When Proteus defends love we hear Shakespeare just as clearly as when Valentine inveighs against it: