The Oxford Shakespeare The Two Gentlemen of Verona [Hardcover]

This edition ofThe Two Gentlemen of Veronaoffers a complete consideration of all aspects of the text. It interprets the play less as a contribution to a Renaissance literary debate between love and friendship (the traditional academic view) than as a dramatization of competing kinds of love--a theatrical counterpart to Shakespeare's Sonnets. It analyzes the lyrical language with which these kinds of love are expressed, and explores the tension between lyricism and the violence of some of the play's events, notably the concluding attempted rape scene. It also provides further evidence thatThe Two Gentlemenis Shakespeare's earliest surviving play, and proposes a new actor for whom the principal comic role of Lance may have been designed. This is the only edition to offer a setting of the song Who is Silvia? prepared by Guy Woolfenden from an Elizabethan source, and is therefore the only edition on the market to provide a complete text for performance.

List of Illustrations
Introduction
Theatrical Issues
Origins
Shakespeare and Lyly
Shakespeare's Earliest Surviving Play?
'Certain Outlaws' and Knights Errant
'The Two Gentlemen' and Shakespeare's Later Work
The Language(s) of Lovers
Wooing (and Dramatic) Technique
Lance, Speed, and Crab
'In love / Who respects friend?': the Final Scene
The Text
Editorial Procedures
Abbreviations and References
The Two Gentlemen of Verona
Appendix A: The Music
Appendix B: Alterations to Lineation
Index

Roger Warrenis the editor of the Oxford Shakespeare editions ofCymbeline,Pericles,Henry VI, Part 2, and (with Stanley Wells)Twelfth Night. He works extensively in the professional theatre.