The Two Gentlemen of Verona

The Complete Works (Oxford Shakespeare) - William Shakespeare, John Jowett, Gary Taylor

PROTEUS Indeed, a sheep doth very often stray, An if the shepherd be a while away. 

SPEED You conclude that my master is a shepherd, then, and I a sheep?

PROTEUS I do.

 

Yeah, but Proteus is an idiot. For the entirety of the play, I could not shake the image of the characters as the characters from Made in Chelsea...so I would say that this was the most insipid play of Will's I have read or seen so far.

 

Thankfully, this was an early one.

 

It was interesting to see some of the early characters and themes, tho: there is a bit of Romeo and Juliet in this one, and a bit Midsummer Nights Dream, and a bit of something else but neither the characters nor the plot are really fleshed out. 

I mean, I did like how the last lines of this play are almost an inversion of the first lines of Romeo and Juliet, so I guess it is not too far-fetched to wonder if Shakespeare recycled parts of this one in his later plays.