SOURCE: Holmberg, Arthur. “The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Shakespearean Comedy as a Rite of Passage.” Queen's Quarterly 90, no. 1 (spring 1983): 33-44.

In the following review, Holmberg praises the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, noting that elaborate costumes and stage backgrounds are not necessary to enjoy an enthusiastic performance of this play.

Drama is the one literary genre that cannot be properly appreciated in either a classroom or an armchair. It is conceived as a spectacle and written to be seen, and the word theater derives from the Greek verb to look at. I always begin lectures on Shakespeare or any other dramatist with an exhortation to my students to see plays in performance as often as possible. All wise saws, however, tend to lose their edge of truth, and Dr Johnson once remarked that men “need not so much to...