About the Play:

Two Gentlemen of Verona is a fast paced romantic farce featuring some of Shakespeare's most memorable comedy characters. It tells the story of best friends, Valentine and Proteus, who separately leave their home city of Verona to serve the Duke in Milan. In Milan, Valentine falls for the Duke's daughter Sylvia, while before leaving Verona, Proteus is hopelessly in love with Julia. But once Proteus arrives in Milan where Valentine has been, he gets an eyeful of his best friend's girl, Silvia. An innocent exchange drives Proteus to forsake his love Julia in favour of the lovely Sylvia. Meanwhile, back in Verona, Julia assumes a male disguise and follows Proteus to Milan. When friends turn into rivals, things quickly go comic as they clash with bandits, a bad-mannered dog, an angry father, and a girl who won't be dumped. Two Gentlemen of Verona is a hidden gem in the Shakespearean canon and is a wild adventure of foolish, passionate young love, with many surprising plot twists. In the end, love overcomes all obstacles, including Sylvia's father, The Duke.

Read William Shakespeare's great comedy Two Gentlemen of Verona in all its brilliance and actually understand what it means. No Fear Shakespeare gives you Shakespeare's complete text of Two Gentlemen of Verona on the left-hand page, side-by-side with an easy-to-understand modern English on the right.

Shakespeare side-by-side in plain English. Each No Fear Shakespeare contains:
• The complete text of the original play
• A line-by-line translation that puts Shakespeare into the kind of English people actually speak today
• A complete list of characters with descriptions
• Plenty of helpful commentary

Two Gentleman of Verona is often considered to be one of the first plays William Shakespeare wrote, with an original date of around 1589-1593. The play deals with the themes of friendship and infidelity, the conflict between camaraderie and romantic love, and the foolish behaviour of people during infatuation. It is also the earliest of Shakespeare's plays in which a young woman disguises herself as a boy, and the only play of his with a dog as a cast member.

About the Playwright:

William Shakespeare was a seventeenth-century writer and dramatist, and is arguably the greatest English-language playwright. Known as the Bard of Avon, under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth I, he penned more than 30 plays, 154 sonnets, and numerous narrative poems and short verses. Equally accomplished in histories, tragedies, comedy, and romance, Shakespeare's most famous works include Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, and As You Like It. Like many of his contemporaries, including Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare began his career on the stage, eventually rising to become part-owner of Lord Chamberlain's Men, a popular dramatic company of his day, and of the storied Globe Theatre in London. Extremely popular in his lifetime, Shakespeare's works continue to resonate more than three hundred years after his death. His plays are performed more often than any other playwright's, have been translated into every major language in the world, and are studied widely by scholars and students.