OK, so as we’ve noted over the past few weeks, the men get a couple of great comic clowns in The Two Gentlemen of Verona in Speed and Launce. So are the women merely the put-upon, threatened, abandoned, and ordered-about pawns of the players and their playwright? Uh, not so much. Buried in Act One is a wonderful bit of physical prop comedy for the actresses playing Julia and Lucetta: the letter scene.
Continue reading “Rip it Up, Baby…”
The Folly of Love, er, ROMANTIC LOVE
In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, we get a pretty clear dichotomy: male friendship vs. romantic love. One is positive, the other negative. Friendship has honor, laws; love is inconstant, foolish, filled with folly.
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Lordy Lord Bawdy Bawd
It’s that time again, our monthly sophomoric drive into Bawdy-Town, our periodic thrusting into that warm, runny center of linguistic gooey goodness that is the naughty bits of (for this month, at least) The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
So here’s the usual warning: if you are easily (or not so easily) offended, stop reading now and proceed to tomorrow’s entry (these are not the excerpts you’re looking for…).
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Language: The “I was rhyming; ’tis you that have the reason” Edition
We’ve done quite a bit of discussion on the various uses of rhyming in the Canon:
- singling out an entire body or block of content
- singling out a couplet of content (for emphasis, particularly at the end of a speech)
- content from outside the play itself–poems, songs, even entire plays that are performed within the context of the scene
- portrayal of other worldly-entities
- rhyme as answer
Now, The Two Gentlemen of Verona has MUCH less rhyme than last month’s Love’s Labor’s Lost, about half as much as our opening The Comedy of Errors, and about twice as much as The Taming of the Shrew. So… how’s it deployed?
Continue reading “Language: The “I was rhyming; ’tis you that have the reason” Edition”
Language: Verse versus Prose
Throughout the Project, we’ve discussed the use of prose and how it differs from the use of verse. We’ve discussed the use of verse for heightened language and prose for the more mundane (the more, well, prosaic), and of course there’s always that nobility = verse//commoners = prose thing.
But how does it work within The Two Gentlemen of Verona?
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In the Name of Clowns and Dogs (Part Two, “Shakespeare loves to use his La[u]nce a lot” edition)
Last week, we began our discussion of clowns in The Two Gentlemen of Verona with a look at Speed, the servant of Valentine. We noted that he’s the kind of clown that needs personal interaction with other characters to convey his humor: he’s either joking with other characters, or commenting on the actions of other characters in asides to us (or to still other characters).
We also noted that Speed’s comic prowess peaked early, then disappeared quickly upon the arrival of Launce, the servant to Proteus. Today, let’s take a look at Launce….
Continue reading “In the Name of Clowns and Dogs (Part Two, “Shakespeare loves to use his La[u]nce a lot” edition)”
Assistance Request
Having a problem coming up with a podcast topic for this week?
Any ideas? (preferably Two Gents – related … )
Thanks in advance….
Two Gentlemen of Verona: Lose the “The” and Sing it Out
Back in 1971, Joseph Papp’s NY Shakespeare Festival’s Mobile Theatre Project produced a new Centerstage (of Baltimore) production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, which included rock music, with a book by John Guare (who also did the lyrics) and Mel Shapiro, and music by Galt MacDermot. The initial concept was to edit down the Shakespeare text and add songs to help tell the story, but the production continued to grow until it became a 35-song full musical, entitled Two Gentlemen of Verona, one that opened on Broadway in December of 1971, won the Best Musical and Best Book Tony Awards (over both Grease and Sondheim’s Follies) in 1972, and finally closed in May of 1973, after more than 600 performances.
Continue reading “Two Gentlemen of Verona: Lose the “The” and Sing it Out”
Podcast 36: The Two Gentlemen of Verona — Pop Culture Edition
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This week’s podcast is a continuation of our month-long discussion of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, including DVD reviews of both the BBC Complete Works production and the 1998 romantic comedy Shakespeare in Love, and a review of the soundtrack to the 1971 stage musical version; plus, we’ll do our usual recap of this week’s blog entries.
The Bill / Shakespeare Project YouTube page, with selections from the 2005 revival of the musical Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Errata:
5:09 — Text should be “familiar to” instead of “familiar with”
Continue reading “Podcast 36: The Two Gentlemen of Verona — Pop Culture Edition”
In the Name of Clowns and Dogs (Part One, the Speed-y edition)
In The Two Gentlemen of Verona, we have two clowns of note, Speed and Launce, the servants of Valentine and Proteus, respectively. These two characters, besides having different “masters,” also have very different types of clownish behavior.
Continue reading “In the Name of Clowns and Dogs (Part One, the Speed-y edition)”