SOURCE: “Patriarchy Rescued in The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” in Anxious Pleasures: Shakespearean Comedy and the Nation-State, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1995, pp. 116-26.

In the following essay, Hall contends that the female characters in The Two Gentlemen of Verona have a redemptive role, in that they help their male counterparts to restore patriarchal order by the play's end.

A remarkable number of Shakespeare's comedies focus on the contrast between male inconstancy and female constancy. Indeed, with the single exception of Troilus and Cressida, it seems possible to assert that there are no inconstant heroines, although the comedies which feature the lovers' debates (The Taming of the Shrew and the Beatrice-Benedick plot in Much Ado about Nothing), might be said to make the constant/inconstant opposition irrelevant. Still, the generalization seems valid. In the comedies, the evil of inconstancy to the given word is a male failing. It does...