SOURCE: Smallwood, Robert. “Shakespeare Performances in England, 1998.” In Shakespeare Survey 52 (1999): 230-31.

In the following excerpt, Smallwood lauds Edward Hall's staging of The Two Gentlemen of Verona, particularly the production's powerful interpretation of the play's final scene.

Awkwardness, even ineptness, has been perceived also in The Two Gentlemen of Verona and this has led to its being regarded as Shakespeare's earliest comedy; it was certainly Edward Hall's directorial début at Stratford when his production opened in February and ‘double first’ turned out not to be too unapt for a searching, challenging production, with the alleged ineptnesses, especially in the final moments, an important part of the challenge. The journey of the play was marked by two single-gender, non-sexual embraces: at the end of the first scene by a valedictory hug of separation, expected all through the scene, between the leading men, Proteus and Valentine; at the end of...