SOURCE: “The ‘Full Meaning’ of The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” in Comparative Drama, Vol. 23, No. 3, Fall 1989, pp. 201-27.

In the essay below, Cole discusses the problems with dating The Two Gentlemen of Verona, and analyzes the sources from which Shakespeare may have drawn to craft the play. In his examination of the play's tone and themes, Cole contends that the comic scenes of the play do not simply satirize or criticize the ideals of love and friendship, but rather reveal these ideals “in a new light.”

Speaking of Shakespeare's “continuous development,” T. S. Eliot once insisted that “the full meaning of any one of his plays is not in itself alone, but in that play in the order in which it was written, in its relation to all of Shakespeare's other plays, earlier and later: we must know all of Shakespeare's work in order to know any of...