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We're giving one character from Two Gents a giant mallet. Who should it be?
Julia
Silvia
Valentine
Lance
Speed
Duke
Lucetta
Thurio
Crab the Dog
Tell us why in the tags!
Want to play with us? Signups are open through September 5th, no rehearsals or experience (or giant mallet) needed!
The secret yuri Shakespeare doesn't want you to know about
Oh wow LOOK! It's Sylvia and Julia from the Hofstra production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona telling you to vote for them in @gayestshakespearecouples 's tournament !!
A propaganda screenshot redraw :)
The theatre director, now teaching at Oxford after years running the RSC, thinks The Two Gentlemen of Verona is perfect for a young cast to
There’s a scene where Launce and Speed, two comic servants, discuss the attributes of a milkmaid. One of the actors said to me that it was exactly like a Hinge profile. I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about until he explained that it was a dating app.
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How, though, do you cast a play when you are unfamiliar with the students’ work? “Well,” says Doran, “80 initially sent in videos. I saw 40 of them in person and cast 20. What is extraordinary is the range of experience. Half the cast are undergraduates: the other half are doing DPhils or master’s degrees in subjects that include neuroscience, the history of art and professional theatre in the Soviet gulags. Three of the cast I’ve discovered also do drag acts.”
“VALENTINE
I know him as myself; for from our infancy
We have conversed and spent our hours together:
And though myself have been an idle truant,
Omitting the sweet benefit of time
To clothe mine age with angel-like perfection,
Yet hath Sir Proteus, for that's his name,
Made use and fair advantage of his days;
His years but young, but his experience old;
His head unmellow'd, but his judgment ripe;
And, in a word, for far behind his worth
Comes all the praises that I now bestow,
He is complete in feature and in mind
With all good grace to grace a gentleman”
“HELENA
… We, Hermia, like two artificial gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew together,
Like to a double cherry—seeming parted
But yet an union in partition—
Two lovely berries molded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies but one heart,
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one and crownèd with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
It is not friendly, ’tis not maidenly.
Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it,
Though I alone do feel the injury.”
^^ Same energy
Has anyone else seen Hofstra University’s 2018 production of The Two Gentlemen of Verona for their 69th Shakespeare Festival. or is it just me
The Two Gentlemen of Verona is insane because if you read it without context you could reasonably interpret it as a well-written, thoughtful and cutting critique of patriarchal society and toxic masculinity. You could easily see it as satirizing the way women are objectified and dehumanized, and have their suffering swept under the rug when it’s not convenient to address.
I mean, it isn’t subtle. The second scene has Julia outright say that when women say no they mean yes. Proteus claims Sylvia is the sun and therefore shines bigger and brighter than Julia who is merely a star, even though we now know that the sun is just a medium-sized star. The only way for Julia to safely travel is to pretend to be a man. If Julia from Verona is traveling as a man, who are the “Two Gentlemen of Verona?” What does it mean to be a “gentleman?” Valentine tries to perform masculinity by lying that he’s killed a man (and “slew him manfully”). Proteus asks for a picture of Sylvia, which he sees as a valid replacement for Sylvia herself. Sylvia is the only person to show Julia true compassion. Sylvia & Julia are clearly set up to be romantic rivals, but Sylvia has such a strong distaste for Proteus that there’s no chance of that. “Her eyes are gray as glass, and so are mine.” Valentine is introduced essentially as “one of the good ones” but once it becomes convenient he tries to GIFT SYLVIA TO PROTEUS. Sylvia has NO LINES for all of the ending while the men around her argue over who gets to marry her. SHE IS LITERALLY SILENCED.
But no. William Shakespeare honest-to-god wrote that play as a regular comedy with a happy ending. Presumably did not think about the implications of any of that one bit. He just thought all of that was normal.
