INTRODUCTION

Summary

So far as we know, this play first achieved print in the Folio of 1623, where it follows The Tempest. But it stands first on the list of six comedies mentioned by Meres in 1598; and all internal tests, of craftsmanship and versification, point to a date considerably earlier yet. It is indeed, by general consent, a youthful production: and we may pretty safely place it somewhere near the threshold of Shakespeare's dramatic career.

At all events, in the long interval before the stage copy reached the Folio printers the theatrical people had played some strange tricks upon it. Shakespeare's original carelessness may perhaps have been to blame for mixing up Verona and Padua with Milan, as for giving Verona a roadstead and starting Valentine for Milan—as easily as one might start him from Oxford to Cambridge—by sea. Shakespeare, first and last, was sadly addicted to finishing off a play in a hurry. But the final scene of the Two Gentlemen is vitiated (as we hope to show) by a flaw too unnatural to be charged upon Shakespeare.

Reserving this, and putting the vexation of it out of our thought for the moment, we can enjoy the play as a light and jocund Italianate comedy—Italianate, that is, in the Elizabethan fashion, when it chose to take its Italy gaily.