Seven Ages

Comedy · c. 1594

Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona

Very likely Shakespeare’s first play: two friends, one girl disguised as a page, one outrageous final-scene forgiveness, and one scene-stealing dog.

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By the Seven Ages editors2 min read

The machinery of the later comedies — cross-dressed heroines, love versus friendship, journeys to greener worlds — is all here in first draft.

It is slight, and the ending has troubled everyone since roughly 1594, but Launce’s monologues to his dog Crab are genuinely funny and Julia is a prototype worth meeting. Best read as the seed catalogue for everything that flowered later.

Two Gentlemen of Verona on stage

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Two Gentlemen of Verona on screen

Typeset plate for the screen adaptation The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1983). A designed placeholder, not a picture of the poster.1983The TwoGentlemen ofVeronaTV FILM

1The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1983)

TV film

BBC Television Shakespeare

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Mark it in your record when you finish — one seat, kept for decades.

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