The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act 3

Or, “’Tis an ill office for a gentleman”

This will come as no surprise, I’m sure, to anyone who’s ever written anything, but the hardest part of writing this blog so far has been the editing. Deciding what to write about each act and what to skip has been excruciating.

Part of the difficulty stems from how relatively unknown this play is. I want this blog to be a personal account of my time reading through the complete works of Shakespeare. My last post, however, felt to me more like an AV Club episode review, more plot than reaction. It’s somewhat necessary, in my defense. I doubt I’ll need to lay the scene in fair Verona so explicitly when I get to “Romeo and Juliet”, for example; everybody knows about the star-crossed lovers and the family feud, and anyone who forgets who Rosaline is can probably pick it up again through context. But “Two Gentlemen”? “Henry VI”? “Pericles, Prince of Tyre”? It might take some doing to find the right balance with these.

Already I’ve had to glide past some of the grace notes in this play. Consider Crab, the dog. The joke is that his master, Lance, is effusive and emotional, while he himself is not, because he is a dog. I especially like this exchange in Act 2, Scene 4, discussing whether Valentine and Sylvia are truly in love:

SPEED
But tell me true, will’t be a match?
LANCE
Ask my dog. If he say “Ay,” it will; if he say “No,” it will; if he shake his tail and say nothing, it will.

At this point, I imagine the two of them staring at the dog, waiting to see what he does. The dog remains motionless, still as a mannequin. Speed, growing impatient, begins to say his next line. Lance shushes him. The dog doesn’t move. Speed waits, then begins again. Lance shushes him, never taking his eyes off the dog. The dog doesn’t move. This pattern repeats a few times more, just a beat longer than is comfortable for anyone, including the audience, until Speed finally snaps.

SPEED
The conclusion is, then, that it will.

There’s another great bit where Lance physically interrupts Pantino, the prim and officious servant of Proteus’ father, Antonio, during a harangue. Pantino’s shocked, offended, and slightly terrified reaction?

PANTINO
Why dost thou stop my mouth?

I imagine this line delivered through Lance’s hand, as deadpan as possible. Think David Spade in Tommy Boy, trying to keep his composure while forced to interact with an unwelcome agent of chaos.

And speaking of David Spade, given that I’ve already cast Valentine and Proteus as Swingers-era Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau, I’ve committed myself to only casting actors from the mid-1990s for the rest of the characters. Pantino, as I’ve said, is David Spade from Tommy Boy, a suck-up and a stick in the mud. Lance is an emotional mess who excels at physical humor and occasionally lets slip with some racist remarks; that sounds like Michael Richards to me. Which, in turn, makes casting Speed, Lance’s slightly dyspeptic frenemy, a no-brainer: Wayne Knight. The doofus Sir Thurio feels very Patrick Warburton-y to me, especially back in his Puddy days.

Crab the emotionally opaque dog will obviously be played by Eddie, from Frasier.

I go back and forth with Julia. Her manic turn in Act 1 suggests Drew Barrymore, but I’m leaning towards Uma Thurman circa The Truth About Cats and Dogs. Sylvia hasn’t had much to do yet besides be pretty enough to drive a wedge between our titular heroes, so I’ll stick with the Swingers theme and go with Heather Graham, though Patricia Arquette in True Romance could do in a pinch.

I hadn’t considered Christopher Walken as the Emperduke, but thinking of True Romance drives it home for me. He’d be equally believable as a well-meaning father who simply can’t understand why his daughter refuses to favor his chosen suitor, a lovestruck widower unsure how to jump back in to the dating pool (more on this anon), and a ruler who wouldn’t think twice about ordering the banishment and death of any man who dared cross him.

The Emperduke also has the distinction of being the first and only character so far to execute a complicated plan that actually makes both emotional and logistical sense. Tipped off by the now villainous Proteus of Valentine’s plan to elope with his daughter that evening, the Emperduke devises a scheme to unravel Valentine’s plan without revealing Proteus’ betrayal. He intercepts Valentine en route to Sylvia’s window and feeds him a story of woe: he is heartsick, in love with a woman who spurns his advances, and cannot be easily visited. Valentine, never one to pass up an opportunity to share his opinions (at length), not only offers his patron some rank misogyny…

VALENTINE
Win her with gifts if she respect not words;
Dumb jewels often in their silent kind
More than quick words do move a woman’s mind.

…some stunningly terrible advice regarding romantic consent…

Take no repulse, whatever she doth say;
For “get you gone” she doth not mean “away.”

…and some frat-bro-worthy boasting…

That man that hath a tongue, I say, is no man
If with his tongue he cannot win a woman.

…before he ultimately blows his own plan. He suggests the Emperduke find himself a corded ladder to climb to his woman’s window, and to hide that corded ladder in a long cloak, even as he himself is carrying a corded ladder beneath his own long cloak! What a schmuck. The Emperduke quickly shakes the cloak, finds the ladder and a love note to Sylvia, and banishes Valentine from Padua. Advantage Proteus.

Ah, but that love letter. It’s mostly banal lovey-dovey garbage, but the last line is delightfully dirty, like some Elizabethan Marvin Gaye lyric. Imagine this whispered in your ear by Isaac Hayes and you’ll know what I mean:

Sylvia, this night I will enfranchise thee.

Ohhhh yeah.

At this point, I get the feeling that Shakespeare is well aware of how ridiculous his two nominal protagonists are. Authorial intent is always difficult to divine, especially for works written centuries before ours, but there is a clear difference between the impulsive, reckless behavior of Valentine and Proteus (and Julia and Sylvia, for that matter) and the relatively more thoughtful and considered actions of Antonio and the Emperduke, and I find it hard to imagine that such a difference could be unintended.

And yet, there’s something almost modern about the heel turn that Proteus is taking. A sensitive, lovestruck boy gets teased by a cooler dude and turns into a toxic jerk, willing to betray his closest friend and cheat on his fiancee for the chance to “upgrade” to a hotter girl. Proteus may be English literature’s first example of the prototypical PUA.