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“The Two Gentlemen of Verona” was Shakespeare’s first play, drawing inspiration from various sources including “Diana Enamorada” by Jorge de Montemayor and stories of Titus and Gisippus. The play features confused lovers and a woman dressed as a man, with similarities to “Diana Enamorada”. Shakespeare also borrowed characters and scenes from other works, including Arthur Brooke’s “The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet”.
Considered a comedy, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” was the first play written by William Shakespeare. As with many of his other works, Shakespeare is said to have drawn this tale from a number of other sources, including romances and stories from Spain and other parts of England. Some scholars argue that an important source for the play was the poem “Diana Enamorada” by Jorge de Montemayor. Other alleged inspirations were the stories of Titus and Gisippus, published in a few sources, and Arthur Brooke’s “The Tragic Story of Romeo and Juliet”.
Like many other Shakespeare plays, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” features the comic exploits of a woman dressing as a man and confused lovers. Shakespeare is often said to have drawn most of the plot of the play from the poem “Diana Enamorada”, a Spanish pastoral novel. This poem features a man professing his love for a woman, only to be playfully rejected by her. After the man is sent to another country, the woman follows him, disguised as a boy. Meanwhile, the man in the poem falls on another woman, just like the characters in “The Two Gentlemen of Verona”. The woman dressed as a boy ends up acting as an intermediary between the two lovers in the Spanish tale.
Another often cited source for “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is the story of Titus and Gisippo. These are two characters from other stories who are close friends, just like Valentine and Proteus, the friends in Shakespeare’s play. Titus and Gisippus appear in Book II, Chapter 12 of Thomas Elyot’s “The Governor” and in a large collection of short stories included in Giovanni Bocaccio’s “The Decameron”. Like the Shakespeare duo, Tito and Gisippo are inseparable friends until they fall in love with the same woman.
A similar story is also found in “Euphues: Anatomy of Wit”, published in 1579 by John Lyly, and also features two close friends fighting over a woman. In the end, it is decided not to pursue her to preserve her friendship. Some say Lyly’s style may also have had a major influence on the development of Shakespeare’s signature voice.
In addition to themes and style, “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” also borrows characters from other works of literature. For example, Shakespeare used Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet as the main source for his famous tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The character called Friar Lawrence, who appears in Brooke’s story, is in a later act of “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Shakespeare may also have taken a scene from Brooke’s tale and used it in “Two Gentleman” – the one in which Valentine uses a ladder to hide and outwit the Duke, the father of one of her loves.
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