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REMARKS

ON

THE PLOT, THE FABLE, AND CONSTRUCTION

OF THE

TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.

In the Diana of Montemayor, a young nobleman of the name Don Felix, becomes enamoured of Felismena, and bribes her maid Rosina to give her a letter. The waiting-woman uses every artifice to get her lady to accept it, and is by her repulsed with a countenance of dissembled anger. After a successful stratagem of the maid, to drop the letter near her, Felismena feels a passion for Don Felix. A year rolls thus away, to the mutual satisfaction of the lovers, when their happiness is interrupted by the young gentleman's father, who, having received intimation of his son's attachment, sends him to the court of the princess Augusta Cæsarina. Felismena, unable to bear his absence, travels to the court in the disguise of a page, and there discovers his perfidy in a serenade which he gives, on the night of her arrival, to Celia, a new mistress. The unhappy fair one now courts the acquaintance of

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Fabius, a page of the inconstant Don Felix, and contrives, under the name of Valerius, to get retained in the service of her perjured lover.

The story of Proteus and Julia, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona, does not, hitherto, differ in a single circumstance from this romance of Montemayor. Mrs. Lenox, therefore, had the greatest reason for asserting that Shakspeare borrowed his fable from the Diana; especially as Farmer says, this performance was translated into English two or three years before 1598, when Meres, in his Wit's Treasury, first mentions the Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Doctor Johnson remarks, that in this play there is a strange mixture of knowledge and ignorance, of care and negligence. The versification is often excellent, the allusions are learned and just; but the author conveys his heroes by sea from one inland town to another in the same country; he places the emperor at Milan, and sends his young men to attend him, but never mentions him more; he makes Proteus, after an interview with Silvia, say he has only seen her picture; and, if we may credit the old copies, he has, by mistaking places, left his scenery inextricable. The reason of all this confusion seems to be, that he took his story from a novel, which he sometimes followed, and sometimes forsook, sometimes remembered, and sometimes forgot.

"It is observable," says Pope, " that the style of this comedy is less figurative, and more natural and unaffected than the greater part of this author's,

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though supposed to be one of the first he wrote." To this observation of Pope, Theobald adds, that "it is one of Shakspeare's worst plays, and is less corrupted than any other." Sir T. Hanmer thinks that our poet had but little hand in it, and Mr. Upton that he had no hand at all. But, as Johnson wisely demands, "if it be taken from him, to whom shall it be given?"-" It will be found more credible that Shakspeare might sometimes sink below his highest flights, than that any other should rise up to his lowest."

Dramatis Persona.

DUKE of MILAN, father to Silvia.

VALENTINE, }Gentlemen of Verona.

PROTEUS,

ANTONIO, father to Proteus.

THURIO, a foolish rival to Valentine.
EGLAMOUR, agent for Silvia in her escape.
SPEED, a clownish servant to Valentine.
LAUNCE, servant to Proteus.

PANTHINO, servant to Antonio.

Host, where Julia lodges in Milan.

Out-laws.

JULIA, a lady of Verona, beloved by Proteus.

SILVIA, the duke's daughter, beloved by Valentine.

LUCETTA, waiting-woman to Julia.

Servants, musicians.

SCENE, sometimes in Verona; sometimes in Milan; and on the frontiers of Mantua.

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