SOURCE: "Two Gentlemen of Verona," in Shakespeare 's Comedies: From Roman Farce to Romantic Mystery, University of Delaware Press, 1986, pp. 48-62.

In this essay, Ornstein surveys the characters in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and compares the play with Shakespeare's other comedies.

Unlike Errors and Love's Labor's, which are frequently and successfully staged today, Two Gentlemen is not often produced and very rarely to critical acclaim. The play is interesting enough to hold an audience's interest despite an unaccountably silly final scene, but not if directors lack confidence in its artistic qualities or reduce its characters to clichès Silvia often seems to step out of a pre-Raphaelite painting; almost invariably she is golden-haired, ethereal, and pensive. Julia strides forth as quintessential Elizabethan ingenue—sprightly, winsome, remorselessly girlish in doublet and hose.

Proteus and Valentine usually appear as all-purpose Elizabethan gallants who are almost indistinguishable from one another...