By Jackson Pinkowski
Scholars widely consider The Two Gentlemen of Verona as William Shakespeare’s earliest play, and for good reason. In the early comedy, one can feel the dramaturge testing the waters of his medium, making a few stray hits — Lance’s standout speeches —and other big misses — most notably, the play’s ill-conceived ending. With The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare hones his craft, sharpening narrative progression, and exercising a masterful command over a plethora of moving subplots. Though wildly different in form and conception, both works display a similar character arc: an overly ideal, and thus oblivious, male lover who must be corrected in his ways and ultimately returned to his female love. Probing further into this shared arc allows one to discover that young Proteus and Bassanio are over-reliant on their homosocial, arguably homoerotic, friendships with Valentine and Antonio, respectively. This pubescent same-sex attachment stands in the way of the men’s ability to court women and blocks their entrance into the realm of marriage, which is the ultimate resolution in both The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Merchant of Venice. The men must outgrow their primal relationships and replace them with the matrimonial relationship, condensed into the symbol of the ring; in the works’ schema, friendship must sooner or later subjugate itself to the generative ritual of marriage. Interestingly though, Shakespeare makes a key distinction between the endings of the two plays, which significantly alters the social effect of both plays. Upon a close investigation of the sexual arc of the plays, one finds significant similarities and, more importantly, striking differences that reveal the dangers of flagrant homosocial bonds, the civilizing effect of marriage in the genre of romantic comedy, and, ultimately, Shakespeare as a great mind in the process of artistic growth, willing to readapt his work and refine his social commentary.
The relationship between the titular characters of The Two Gentlemen of Verona perfectly displays the nascent homosocial bond which recurs in Shakespeare’s work. At the play’s outset, Shakespeare introduces the reader to Proteus’ and Valentine’s friendship as it is being tested; Valentine must go to the emperor’s court in Milan, leaving Proteus in Verona. Proteus entreats Valentine to stay but Valentine refuses, stating, “Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus” and continues, “Were’t not affection chains thy tender days / I rather would entreat thy company / To see the wonders of the world abroad” (I.I. 4-6). This opening line places the reader in media res and immediately establishes the tension between the realm of homosocial friendship and heterosexual romance; the qualifier “loving” ascribed to Proteus reflects the love held between the two men. However, it too refers to Proteus’ newfound love of Julia; the dual meaning of the word is troubling as it suggests conflict between the masculine realm of friendship and the feminine realm of marriage as “loving” can refer to Proteus’ care for both Valentine and Julia.
Furthermore, by expressing his desire to remain within the comfort of this same-sex bond and imploring Proteus to join him, Valentine discretely implicates the feminine figure as an obstacle to their homosocial bond. The scene continues as Valentine jovially chides Proteus for his obsessive love, but his continued disparagements come off as failed attempts to conceal his resentment at the prospect of losing his intimate friend. In his accusations against Proteus, Valentine confesses his feelings of abandonment. In turn, Valentine reverts to a distanced coolness, rebuffing Proteus’ offer to take him to his ship: “No; now let us take our leave. / To Milan let me hear of thee by letters / Of thy success in love” (I.I. 56-8). In this restrained send-off, Valentine ultimately comes to terms with the severance of their relationship and maps out their respective futures; the decline of the homosocial relationship results in the blossoming of heterosexual love and, as the word “success” implies, marriage. The end of the first scene thus establishes an intimate and latently homoerotic male bond before putting it to bed in search of greater success through heterosexual marriage.
Though this male bond appears broken at the end of the first scene, Proteus and Valentine rekindle their friendship as Proteus forsakes Julia and follows Valentine to Milan. While some might argue that Proteus’s father, rather than Proteus himself, makes this choice, the text problematizes this simple answer. Though Panthino, Antonio’s servant, asks Proteus about the possibility of joining the court in Milan, he first inquires about the contents of Julia’s letter. Out of virtually any excuse Proteus might provide, he pretends the letter is from Valentine, relaying his success at court and his wish for Proteus to join him. This is a peculiar lie to tell, seeing as only a few lines before, Proteus wished for both his and Julia’s parents “To seal our happiness with their consents” (I.III. 49). If Proteus were genuinely interested in the prospect of marriage, this would have been the ideal opportunity to reveal his desire. Instead, he regresses to the comfort of his homosocial bond with Valentine. Having decided to prioritize his ideal friendship with Valentine, Proteus flees Verona, but before he parts with his faux-love, Julia, they exchange rings. The ring, a symbol that returns in The Merchant of Venice, represents the promise of marriage and its civilizing effects. It reminds Proteus of his promised duty to Julia, and thus, in turn, his need to outgrow his homosocial bond. However, Proteus’ choice to reunite with Valentine dampens the ring’s symbolic purity. Even the ring, the supreme symbol of heterosexual love, has been tainted by the pervasive forces of homosocial bonds.
As the play progresses, the reader witnesses Valentine make the change that Proteus only feigns; Valentine fully commits to Silvia, whereas Proteus has just fled his Julia. Proteus’ arrival in Milan should have restored this male bond, and for a few lines, it seems that it has, with Proteus putting aside the realm of love to please Valentine: “My tales of love were wont to weary you: / I know you joy not in love-discourse” (II.IV. 121-2). Where in the first scene Proteus muses endlessly on the power of love, upon reuniting with Valentine he wholly shuns the prospect of marriage and reverts to his previous friendship. Valentine, conversely, outgrows his obsessive bond with Proteus and replaces it with his love for Silvia. It is at this very point of the play that the true conflict erupts; in falling in love with Silvia, Valentine frees himself from Proteus. In turn, Proteus, in an act of jealousy and revenge, resolves to woo her: “Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold / And that I love him not as I was wont” (II.IV. 211-2). What motivates Proteus’ sudden change of heart? Is it an attempt to feel closer to Valentine, forcing himself to desire what he desires, or is it the perverse desire for revenge against Valentine for desecrating their utopian homosocial bond? The answer is likely a nuanced combination of the two; Proteus is motivated by a paradoxical desire to both seek revenge against Valentine and regain his lost friendship.
The turning point in the arc of the homosocial male bond to heterosexual marriage is the point of correction and the rightful return to the betrothed. As Two Gentlemen approaches its end, this conclusion seems imminent. Like many of Shakespeare’s female characters, Julia can intuit Proteus’ weakness and infidelity and thus joins him in Milan. By dressing as a boy, Julia infiltrates the homosocial sphere into which Proteus has retreated. In doing so, she witnesses him relinquish her ring unto Silvia, the same ring that was meant “to bind him” to Julia (IV.IV. 98). The ring’s intended effect was to temper the passions of young Proteus and tether him solely to Julia, emphasizing the civilizing effects of marriage in Shakespearean plays. Yet the narrative goes awry as Julia does not stand resolute in her mission to punish and correct the ways of Proteus. Instead, she abets him, handing off the ring to Silvia. She passively follows Proteus to his attempted rape of Silvia, where looking on, she remains unable to act. Julia’s reticent forgiveness mirrors the narrative arc of the homosocial friendship and echoes Valentine’s own hasty forgiveness of Proteus. Thus, the realm of female power ultimately recedes and the masculine bonds of friendship are left to correct and forgive.
Once again, Shakespeare presents a dichotomy of the realm of female and the male and civil and uncivil when Proteus overpowers Silvia, attempting to make her “yield to [his] desire,” and Valentine steps in and commands him to “let go that rude uncivil touch” (V.IV. 58, 59). Proteus’ violent actions against women spurred by his obsessive reliance upon his male bond are decried as uncivil by Valentine, a “civilized” man who has submitted to the realm of heterosexual love with Silvia. That being said, Valentine takes only fifteen lines to absolve Proteus of his sins and return him to Julia. This is precisely why scholars and readers alike often consider the ending unsatisfying. Those harmed—either Julia or Silvia—should get to dole out corrective punishment and eventual forgiveness. Furthermore, readers find the ending unsatisfactory because the story ends precisely where it started, with Proteus donning only the illusion of change; thus no real character progression has occurred. The couple exchanges rings once more, but the all-too-convenient double marriage cannot solve the societal conflict that the play presents. Because Proteus was only tamed by Valentine and thus still relies on his homosocial bond, readers do not find his commitment to Julia believable. However, Shakespeare, with a keen eye for revision, recognized the embryonic brilliance of the play’s arc and end and sought to perfect it in The Merchant of Venice.
The beginning of The Merchant of Venice echoes Shakespeare’s earlier comedy. At the outset, Antonio is in the depths of sadness, for which there is seemingly no explanation. A widely accepted theory for Antonio’s sadness is that he suffers from unrequited love for Bassanio. This assumption takes form when Solanio and Salerio ask him if it is love that grieves him, and he swiftly deflects with a “Fie, fie!” (I.I. 48). Much like in Two Gentlemen, there is a notable overabundance of same-sex affection between the men compared to heterosexual affection; Antonio makes no mention of a wife or children yet takes in Bassanio as an intimate friend and dependant. As Joseph Pequigney theorizes in “The Two Antonios,” Antonio’s sadness likely stems from his presupposed knowledge of Bassanio’s quitting Venice for Portia (210). This reading strengthens as one acknowledges that the play’s emerging conflict of abandonment of the homosocial bond mirrors the earlier Two Gentlemen.
This is not to say, however, that Antonio’s over-reliance on this bond is one-sided. As Shakespeare demonstrates in Two Gentlemen, the pre-romantic homosocial bond relies on the active participation of both men. Bassanio too heavily relies on Antonio financially and emotionally, which is perfectly encapsulated in his confession: “To you, Antonio / I owe the most in money and in love” (I.I. 134-5). Unlike in Two Gentlemen, Shakespeare emphasizes the adverse effects of this homosocial dependence as it manifests in the form of debt. Though it appears that Bassanio goes into Antonio’s debt to woo Portia, this unnecessary step exposes Bassanio’s tendency to excessively rely on Antonio. If Bassanio had courted Portia without Antonio’s aid, his mission would have been successful because Portia’s hand lies within the lead casket, emphasizing humility and selflessness rather than riches. Here, Shakespeare recycles the arc of Two Gentlemen: Proteus did not need to follow Valentine to Milan, for his entrance into the realm of marriage was set up in Verona with Julia. Paralleling Proteus, Bassanio fails to completely sever his homosocial dependence on Antonio and becomes further bound to the merchant. In this later play, Shakespeare enriches the dangers of its comfort; for Antonio, it evolves into a sort of sado-masochism, in which he is willing to offer a pound of flesh for Bassanio. Expanding upon the opening scene of Two Gentlemen, Shakespeare heightens the stakes of the male homosocial relationship, exposing its cycle of dependency and potential fatality. This would have been the case for Antonio were it not for the heroine, Portia.
By the end of Act IV, scene II, having successfully defended Antonio, Portia, disguised as Balthasar, has not yet completed her quest. Like Julia, Portia disguises herself as a boy to infiltrate the court and invade Antonio and Bassanio’s relationship. But unlike Julia who remained passive to the homosocial relationship, Portia takes the offence, actively instigating Antonio’s betrayal. The revised portrayal of Portia as an active agent in the correction and taming of her wayward love creates a more potent narrative arc than Julia’s passive resignation and Valentine’s careless dispensing of forgiveness. Bassanio, though, holds out in giving the ring, outdoing Proteus, for whom it took no convincing. That is until Antonio pleads, “My Lord Bassanio, let him have the ring. / Let his deservings and my love withal / Be valued against your wife’s commandment” (IV.II. 462-4). The relinquishing of the ring does not so much reflect Bassanio’s admiration for Balthasar as it does Bassanio’s weakness for Antonio. The merchant leverages his stronger, inherently erotic bond to his benefit, placing Bassanio’s marriage in direct opposition, and Bassiano quite literally “against [his] wife.” Shakespeare thoroughly improves the resigned Julia into Portia and Nerissa, who almost find pleasure in the testing of their husbands; Nerissa shouts out: “I’ll see if I can get my husband’s ring, / which I did make him swear to keep for ever.” (IV.II.15-6). In contrast with Two Gentlemen, the women whip their men into shape. Portia senses her husband’s colossal dependence upon Antonio and incites his betrayal, setting the stage for her final act of correction.
Rather than staying silent like Julia, Portia has the final say in her husband’s correction. As the party returns to Belmont, Portia’s punitive plan begins to transpire. Employing much of the same comedic cruelty as in the Balthasar episode, upon Portia’s introduction to Antonio, she says to Bassanio: “You should in all sense be much bound to him, / For, as I hear, he was much bound for you” (V.I. 147-8). Though, on the one hand, a re-telling of the play’s plot, Portia here subtly identifies the perverse nature of the two men’s relationship, in which one is eternally bound to the other. Nerissa and Portia then reveal that they have the rings and imply that they obtained them by sleeping with the doctor and his clerk. This sleight of hand by the women makes the men aware of the vulnerability fostered by their strictly male bond. In being completely absorbed in their emotional bondage to one another, they have left their wives, and thus themselves and their honour, in danger. Portia’s elaborate series of revelations and corrections reaches its climax as she employs Antonio in her forgiveness of Bassanio:
“Por. Then you shall be his surety. Give him this
And bid him keep it better than the other
Ant. Here Lord, Bassanio. Swear to keep this ring.” (V.I. 269-70)
Portia’s ironic narrative inversion cuts both men. Antonio must renege on his plea for Bassanio to relinquish his wife’s ring; he must painfully serve as a ring bearer in this pseudo-marriage ceremony. Bassanio finds it humiliating to rely on someone else to vouch for his loyalty. Portia sadistically yet comically corrects Bassanio’s transgression and returns him to the realm of marriage, but this return comes at a cost. As Harold Bloom suggests in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, though Bassanio has undergone a significant change and made a clean break from his regressive male friendship, Antonio is left relatively empty-handed (178). He will return to Venice with nothing but his money and go on to live a life of celibacy like Aragon and Morrocco. In contrast, Portia and Bassanio will venture forth into married life and its generative properties, hinted at by Gratiano’s bawdy closing lines. The play’s ending is a perfected version of Two Gentlemen’s narrative; it strengthens the sphere of women and marriage as a civilizing and procreative force and depicts the over-reliance on the male homosocial bond as having grave and irreversible consequences.
Both The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Merchant of Venice explore a similar male sexual arc, repeatedly representing identical scenes: the establishment of a strong homosocial and potentially homoerotic bond between two men, followed by the disruption of this perfect same-sex realm by the prospect of heterosexual love, and finally, the correction of man towards a heterosexual marital path. Though both Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Merchant of Venice portray these similar storylines, their details and effects are starkly different. In the former, the male bond is much too strong, and the female binding too weak; though, realizing its thematic value, Shakespeare recycled and improved the arc in The Merchant of Venice. He remoulds the passive Julia into the fierce heroine Portia, renders the consequences of remaining in the homosocial bond fatal, and creates a future in married life that is not only believable but enviable. In these two plays, Shakespeare reworks and reemploys character types, scenes, or whole narrative arcs to improve his depiction of sexual maturation and marriage. In doing so, Shakespeare equally clarifies the instructive social implications of his comedies. These Shakespearean marriages serve as a dual resolution of personal problems and reinforce societal norms and harmony. The Two Gentlemen of Verona represents a dangerous same-sex friendship but, in its ending, lets Proteus and the reader off the hook. In contrast to the earlier comedy, The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare suggests a much more profound danger for the self and others as a result of men’s regression into solipsistic homosocial bonds to circumvent the spheres of love, marriage, and woman.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Riverhead Books, 1999.
Pequigny, Joseph. “The Two Antonios and Same-Sex Love in ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice.’” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 22, no. 2, 1992, pp. 201–21.
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice. Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen, The Modern Library, 2010.
Shakespeare, William. The Two Gentlemen of Verona: The Arden Shakespeare. Edited by Clifford Leech, Routledge, 1989.