SOURCE: “Jealous Gentlemen: A Reappraisal of The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” in Shakespeare Jahrbuch, Vol. 131, 1995, pp. 116-27.

In the following essay, Østergaard analyzes the dynamics of the relationships of Valentine, Proteus, Julia, and Silvia, and observes that the women may be viewed as the “displaced representations” of the love between the two men.

Valentine and Proteus are the The Two Gentlemen of Verona, fast friends since childhood. Valentine leaves for Milan, where he falls in love with Silvia, but Proteus prefers to stay at home with his Julia. So the friends must part. The play opens with the fact of this separation and with their respective attempts to persuade the other to come along or stay at home—whereupon both resolve to go their separate ways. An emblem, so far, of childhood which cannot last forever and of the onset of manhood which enforces a separation between friends...