SOURCE: “Common Courtesy in The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” in Shakespeare's Comic Commonwealths, University of Toronto Press, 1993, pp. 57-73.

In the following essay, Slights asserts that The Two Gentlemen of Verona explores not the theme of love versus friendship but rather the proper function and behavior of a gentleman in courtly society.

                                        ‘he being understood May make good Courtiers, but who Courtiers good?’ 

(John Donne, ‘Satyre V’)

Unlike The Comedy of Errors and The Taming of the Shrew, which build on contrasts between the civilized and the uncivilized, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and Love's Labor's Lost explore the manners and values of courtly society. In The Comedy of Errors, the physical danger threatening anyone outside the social group frames and conditions all the dramatic action. The violence of the physical world that originally dispersed the family, the Ephesian law that threatens aliens with death, and the harsh...