ABSTRACT
The dating of Shakespeare's earliest comedies is uncertain, and it may be that The Two Gentlemen of Verona, rather than The Comedy of Errors, was his first venture in the genre. It would be difficult to argue that either play developed out of the other; rather, they seem to lie side by side. Certainly The Two Gentlemen shows quite a different use of the technique I examined in the last chapter. Instead of setting a variety of different kinds of experience against each other in a swift and flashing interplay, Shakespeare takes one particular experience — that of being in love — and sets it against a background that varies between hostility and indifference. 1 The technique of dislocation is the same, but the concentration is steadier, and we are allowed more time to examine and explore the central experience. Being in love dominates the mind of the victim; it is a private, enclosed and very special state, and our awareness of how special it is is sharpened when we see the lovers against the indifference, or the sardonic detachment, of an outside world full of people who are not in love. 2 The breakdown of understanding between the Syracusans and the Ephesians in The Comedy of Errors depended partly on the external situation of mistaken identity; here, we are more aware of an essential gap between different minds: there is less bustle on the stage, more attention to the interplay of personalities. It is worth remarking that this play has the smallest cast in Shakespeare, and consists to an unusual degree of scenes involving only two or three speakers.
