The Two Gentlemen of Verona

This comedy is considered by many to be Shakespeare’s first. Most critics find it be an uneven affair, except for the non-speaking part of a dog named Crab, reckoned to be one Shakespeare’s biggest laugh-getters. To be fair, the dog’s master, Launce, gets a bunch of good lines, but scholars tend to regard this early effort, as a sort of trial run. As THX-1138 was to Star Wars, so is Two Gentlemen of Verona to the rest of the Shakespeare canon. It is dominated by themes such as, but not limited to: the foolishness of lovers; friendship vs. romantic love; and a whole host of other Bardish favourites. It also marks Shakespeare’s inaugural use of one of his most famous devices – having a female character dress up as a male character and totally fool everyone. I know, I know – all the female characters would have been played by men anyway and so this was probably some sort of meta-humour of the day, but let me tell you, when you’ve watched the entire Shakespeare canon over a couple of months, it starts to wear pretty thin. Anyway, I wanted to do something bright, brash and a bit pop-culture for this one, so these moustache- and lush-lipped push-pins seemed like a fun way to suggest a woman disguised as a man. Dude looks like a lady!