ABSTRACT
Dr. Johnson said of The Two Gentlemen of Verona: “When I read this play I cannot but think that I discover both in the serious and ludicrous scenes, the language and sentiments of Shakespear.” But this play has since fared ill with the critics. Ignored by Coleridge, it was passed off noncommitally by Hazlitt with a few quotations from Speed and Julia. The depreciation of the play for various kinds and degrees of ineptness and obtuseness by such observers as Dowden, Chambers, G.P. Baker, Quiller-Couch, Dover Wilson, Tannenbaum, Charlton, and Van Doren, has tended to obscure its true import. Even the well-intentioned defenses of W.W. Lawrence, Alvin Shaler, and S.A. Small 1 have not been able to reinstate Two Gentlemen into a position of genuine significance in Shakespeare’s development.
