This is my last lecture of this series, and it's on the early comedy to gentlemen of Verona.

If you've seen Shakespeare in love, you might know that the most popular plays in the film's imaginary Elizabethan world are Marlowe's Dr Faustus,

and an unnamed play represented by a scene with a clown and a dog wearing a ruff.

This pleases Queen Elizabeth mightily and is therefore a hit rather to its melanchonic playwright's

disappointment.

That play is two gentlemen of Verona and just about every 21st century commentary on this play

has begun with Shakespeare in love, so I'm no exception there.

The otherwise untrampited play

takes a large role

in Shakespeare in Love.

The dog there in the scene is called

Crab. The films Henslow, played by Geoffrey Rush,

observes comedy is love and a bit with the dog.

That's what they want.

And what I want to plan to talk about in today's lecture is the role of that dog within the themes and the performance of the play.

So let's start with an outline of the plot of two gentlemen.

The two gentlemen of the title are the close frames, Valentine and Proteus.

The play opened with Valentine leaving Verona, in brackets and thinking about the role of place,

but I talked about a couple of weeks ago in relation to Mary Wires of Windsor.

Most of this play takes place in Milan.

The geographical specialty of the title is therefore quite misleading,

but that's probably a different lecture.

...