ABSTRACT
The Two Gentlemen of Verona frequently have been accused of being wooden; the argument is that their "woodenness" is the most transparent indication of the genealogy of the Shakespearian character. The Ovidian etiology of song in rape and violation is disseminated in Silvia's textual generation. Silvia moves through a chain of signifiers to arrive in the place her name determines, the woods. Whereas Valentine balks at the task he has been assigned, Silvia attempts to speak within it. When the Overburian definition proceeds to describe character, it also offers an account of those Elements which people learned first, leaving a strong seale in people's memories. The mind is made by receiving letters; characters are charactered, sealed as letters are, folded. Memory and forgetfulness are mutually constitutive, a generative corruption, as they are in the forge of Proteus's mind receiving the impression of Silvia's picture. People have remarked it tracing the return of the letter that Valentine and Silvia enact.
