著者

青木 啓治 Keiji Aoki

雑誌

英米評論 = English Review (ISSN:09170200)

巻号頁・発行日

no.7, pp.25-63, 1993-01-29

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The problem of how to interpret the final scene of Shakespeare's The Two Gentleman of Verona has long been discussed but has yet to be convincingly solved. In that scene, Valentine catches his friend Proteus trying to seduce his love Silvia and blames him for his betrayal; but because his friend deeply regrets his crime, Valentine not only forgives him but also, to show his friendship to be true, is willing to surrender his love to him. This attitude of his has been made a focus of criticism; critics think it psychologically unnatural, cruel for Silvia, and absurd because Proteus is a worthless friend. Against such criticism, however, some critics have defended Valentine's behaviour on the ground that it reflects the traditional medieval idea that friendship is above love, which is the central theme of Shakespeare's source. In the tenth story of the Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio, Gisippus renounces all his interests in his betrothed Sophronia and gives her to his great friend Titus, who has passionately loved her; in medieval morality, a true friend should not scruple to do anything to show his friendship. Shakespeare seems to have known Boccacio's story through The Governor by Thomas Elyot; and the book is clearly one of his main sources, for Valentine, Proteus, and Silvia in his play correspond respectively to Gisippus, Titus, and Sophronia; and moreover even Valentine's speech to express his renunciation of Silvia is similar to that of Gisippus to renounce Sophronia. The main plot of the play consists of the story of Proteus and his betrothed Julia, who in the disguise of a page, goes to Milan where he is staying, and serves him, watching over his behavior. Shakespeare derived that story from Diana Enamorada by Jorge de Montemayor, a Portuguese poet, and by creating Valentine, Proteus' great friend, introduced into the play the friendship theme based on that of Gisippus and Titus. The problem, however, is that Proteus' character is portrayed much less favourably than Titus'. In the case of the two friends of The Governor, they are united by so deep a friendship that Titus becomes ill by trying to suppress his passion of love for his friend's fiancee; in contrast to this, Proteus, to win his friend's betrothed Silvia, reveals to the Duke, her father, Valentine's plan to elope with her, and consequently his friend is banished. Many critics, therefore, think it foolish of Valentine to surrender his love to such a worthless friend, and in this behaviour of his, they perceive Shakespeare's satire against the medieval conception of masculine friendship. For example, Hereward T. Price thinks Valentine's 'foolish' character to be consistent in the play, and Clifford Leech, the Arden editor of this play, agreeing to such a critical trend, thinks that Julia's swoon when she hears Valentine's famous speech is a conscious action by her to protest against his absurd attitude. However, is her swoon really a conscious performance? On the contrary, did not Shakespeare intend in it a comical effect like that of Rosalind's swoon in IV. iii of As You Like It? When I consider the problems of this play, what seems strange to me is that there should have been no critics who have noticed the ironical effect of Julia's swoon. When she hears that speech of Valentine's it is psychologically natural that she should feel hopeless and fall down in shock. To the present writer, her swoon is felt to be ironical, because she has often in an aside commented satirically using her advantageous position of disguise. What I think to be the conclusive evidence of her swoon's not being a performance is that, before she falls down, she does not make any satirical comment in an aside as she usually does when she feels something to be absurd. It shows that she swoons from true shock and that Valentine's speech is meant not as a satire against the speaker or against the friendship convention, but as an irony against Julia and Silvia. It may be difficult for some critics to feel the irony against Silvia, for she is the symbol of constancy and also partly represents the author's attitude. But soon after her 'O heaven be judge how I love Valentine,……' in the final scene, when she sees her lover willing to offer her to his friend whom she detests, I cannot imagine that the ironist Shakespeare was not conscious of the irony. 'False, perjured' Proteus is justly punished by a satire, but both Julia and Silvia have so long and severely mocked him that the author, knowing the magic power of love, may have felt it proper as a balance of irony to give the women some shock by Valentine's speech. According to E. K. Chambers's chronology, this play was written in the same season of the same year as Love's Labour's Lost, where female mocks male in love. Therefore, the story of Gisippus giving his love Sophronia to Titus may have been attractive to shakespeare as an irony against women; and in adapting the story of Felismena in Diana Enamorada, he may from the start have had the plan to use Gisippus' speech of heroic friendship as a device to make Julia in the disguise swoon and reveal her identity. Anyhow, we must note, it is Valentine's speech which effectively works in ending the complication of the play; and this seems to disprove the theory that, in the speech of friendship, the author intends a satire against the speaker and the convention of masculine friendship. Shakespeare appears to be much interested in the ironical effects produced by Julia's disguise. In using such a technique, one of the most comical effects is produced when the character who is in disguise is placed in an embarrassing situation because of that disguise. Is not such an effect aimed at in Julia's swoon? It will have a great influence on the interpretation of Valentine's famous speech and therefore of the whole play, whether Julia's swoon is meant to be a conscious one or not. To examine this, however, it is necessary to study the play more carefully from the viewpoint of comic technique. What I want to stress in this essay is that, unless critics notice the irony of Julia's swoon, it will be difficult to solve the problems of this play.