Dec 07, 2011 03:11 PM
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It’s definitely a light weight play. Valentine is in love with Silvia and, in the beginning, his best buddy, Proteus is in love with Julia. However, once Proteus goes to the lavish court in Milan and sees Valentine’s love he forgets about Julia and falls for Silvia, betraying Valentine at every turn.
However, things work then selves out marvellously in the end. Both men get their loves, both women theirs. Friendships are restored and even a group of outlaws are forgiven. Ah, yes, all’s well that ends well. This is not a play I would highly recommend or praise. My main disappointment was the shallow view of human nature shown here than one tends to find in later works as I remember them.
The weaknesses I perceived were not so much in the evil character Proteus, but in the better person, Valentine. He’s just too saintly and forgiving to be very believable. I think it has been a full fifty years since I had read an entire Shakespeare play. I’ve often read this or that piece of famous scenes from the more famous plays, but not a start-to-finish read. I purposely chose what I remembered to be a weaker play as my first read, and even there I was delighted with some of the writing in the latter parts. I think I will enjoy this project to return now and read all the plays, slowly, about one a month if that quickly.
