SOURCE: “The Comedies of Action,” in The Evolution of Shakespeare's Comedy: A Study in Dramatic Perspective, Harvard University Press, 1970, pp. 25-38.

In the excerpt that follows, Champion argues that the reversals in The Two Gentlemen of Verona emphasize Shakespeare's focus on plot over characterization as well as his interest in experimenting with comic form.

The Two Gentlemen of Verona is certainly among Shakespeare's earliest attempts to adapt the material of romance to the stage and to devise a comic perspective to control it.¹ Admittedly his effort in this play is only partially successful. Intemperate young lovers, crossed by fate and fortune and caught in an emotional morass which blinds reason and leads the victim to betray friend, parent, and self in the mad pursuit of the adored; capricious yet faithful mistresses, who are nurtured by inordinate flattery and stolid fidelity but whose own faithfulness proves stronger than any...