9th Grade Gabe Gets the Last Word

Gabriel Llanas

9th Grade English

Mr. Fornshell

1st Period

November 5, 1992

Response to The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Shakespeare's play, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, can be summed up in one simple lesson: bros before hos.

Valentine and Proteus are bros. They got each others' backs and they look out for each other. That’s why Valentine doesn’t want Proteus to be in love with Julia:

Love is your master, for he masters you;

And he that is so yoked by a fool

Methinks should not be chronicled for wise.(1:1)

Valentine is trying to warn Proteus, that Love turns people into fools. Which is one hundred percent true, as I can tell you from first-person experience. I thought I was in love with Rachel Howie and I asked her to Winter Formal, and she said no. And then I was telling Tito and Brandon about it and I was saying that I was going to try asking her out again, and Tito had my back. He said, “Gabe, you’re retarded. She’s a senior and she’s hot and you’re a dork.” Bros speak the truth even if it hurts your feelings.

Likewise, Proteus has Valentine’s back later on. When he sees Valentine is stupid in love with Sylvia, he says:

When I was sick (with love), you gave me bitter pills,

And I must minister the like to you. (2:4)

Word to that. Proteus even goes above and beyond the call of brohood when he gets Valentine banished for trying to elope with Sylvia. Anytime a bro is going to go and do something stupid, other bros have to step in.

This is like in Star Wars, when Luke is about to try to take on the whole Death Star by himself, and he’s all alone versus Darth Vader and the Empire and then Han Solo comes flying out of the sun in the Millenium Falcon. Because they were bros, Han couldn’t let Luke do something stupid like taking on the whole empire without a little help. I think Chewbacca and Han Solo are two of the best examples of bros in all of western literature.

Also there’s the girl, Julia, who wants to get Valentine to love her again, and so she chases after him dressed as what? I’ll give you a hint: A BRO. That’s right, she put on a wig and tried to be a bro, because she knows word is bond.

I think you’ll find the smartest character in the whole play is Thurio. Thurio was the scorned suitor of Sylvia before Valentine showed up spitting game. And at the end Valentine says he’ll fight Thurio for Sylvia’s love, and Thurio backs down:

I hold him but a fool that will endanger

His body for a girl that loves him not. (5:4)

Thurio knows that young women are not worth fighting over. It’s like the Fresh Prince says: “Girls of the world ain’t nothin’ but trouble.”

In conclusion: Bros Before Hos. Word is Bond. May the Force Be With You.

The Crutch

As I type this I'm watching what must be one of the worst productions of The Two Gentlemen of Verona ever committed to cheap BBC video. I am too curious to see how they stage the rape/forgiveness/human trafficking finale to turn it off, but this staging is a perfect example of why people hate and fear Shakespeare. It's foreign, false, melodramatic and the actors are all douchebags.

I'll have more to say about this play before I move on to Othello, but first there's a couplet I want to look at more closely.

Act 3 Scene 1. Proteus has just orchestrated Valentine's banishment from Milan by telling Sylvia's father that Valentine planned to elope with her that evening. Now Proteus is comforting his friend even though he was the agent of his grief. Proteus says:

Hope is a lover's staff; walk hence with that

And manage it against despairing thoughts.

I've been in love twice in my life. They were two different kinds of love because they were two different girls. Both ended sloppily, but when the first one ended I held on for so long. Much longer than is healthy I'm sure. At one point I told her that I was optimistic and that I had hope that we would be together in the future. She told me that hope undoes optimism. Because when you hope you long for things you don't have, and in order to be optimistic you have to see the good in things the way they are.

"Hope is a lover's staff." When I read this I see a crutch. I see the lovelorn hobbling back toward something, when, if they dropped the crutch, they'd find they could walk ably in other directions.

As things went bad with the second girl I didn't hope. I didn't want the crutch. I dropped it and walked away too soon.

My dad gives notoriously misinterpreted advice. For example he used to say to me: "Never close any doors." Meaning that you always want to have choices and opportunities, but what I took away from that was: Never make any decisions. Which is obviously a stupid way to live. But there is one thing he says that's always been helpful: "Everything in moderation."

There's a time for the crutch. It's very useful right after you've been injured. But once things are mended you can put it away. Just remember where you put it. Bones and hearts are always in danger of being broken again.

Hollywood Execs Travel Back in Time, Ruin Ending of Shakespeare Play

A pair of hot, young Hollywood Executives traveled back in time to 1590 and gave Shakespeare notes on the final scene of The Two Gentlemen of Verona. The revisions have rendered the play unproduceable in any era or culture which doesn't view a woman as absolute property of the man who loves her.

"We both felt the ending needed some action. Most of the play is a bunch of talking heads on stage talking about things," said one exec, who refused to provide his name fearing recriminations against his ancestors.

"And there weren't enough turns in the story," said the other exec, who identified herself as Genius McSmarty. "People go to the movies, and the theater and want to be surprised by the ending. Like Planet of the Apes or Orphan."

The play's original ending has now been lost to audiences and readers alike due to the instantaneous revision of the last 400 plus years of history as a result of this irresponsible tinkering with the space-time continuum.

The play now ends with Proteus nearly raping Sylvia, the love interest of his best friend, Valentine. Valentine interrupts the violence, Proteus apologizes profusely. Valentine accepts the apology and then very bizarrely offers Sylvia to Proteus as a token of their friendship. Proteus refuses the offer and when his ex-lover, Julia, pulls off her wig and reveals that she is not a boy, Valentine unites Proteus and Julia and takes Sylvia for his own. This all happens in approximately 40 lines of the script.

"Sex, danger and a happy ending. This'll be a great late-summer release," the mystery exec said, referring to their plans to adapt Two Gentlemen into a major motion picture.

They purchased the movie rights to the play from Master Shakespeare for an unprecedented ten pounds, threepence.

"We both knew we wanted to do a modern version of a Shakespearean Play, like setting it in a high school or fraternity row, but all the good Shakespearean plays have already been re-done. We needed something virgin," Genius McSmarty said.

Shakespeare was an easy target because he had no Agent, Manager or other legal representative and needed the ten pounds threepence to see a Doctor for a possible case of Syphilis.

"Shakespeare was resistant to the changes, but we explained where the real power is in this business, and he rolled over. Creative always thinks they know the best way to tell their stories. They have to learn best does not always mean best."

The two execs denied that they wrote the changes themselves. "Not that we couldn't have. I'm familiar with Robert McKee's screenwriting method. I haven't read his book, but I did see Adaptation and that scene he was in inspired the notes we gave Shakespeare," Genius McSmarty said with a satisfied smile.

The Two Gentlemen of Alpha Kappa Nu begins filming this winter. Megan Fox is slated to play Sylvia.

2 Acts of 2 Gents and a Model Tree Kit

I did most of this reading on the balcony at the Barnes and Noble at the Americana at Brand in Glendale while they were setting up the Christmas tree. It was a real tree, but what they did was hoist up the bare tree trunk like the frame of an Amish farm house and then some guy in a cherry picker hammered each of the individual branches into place. Like a piece of semi-disposable Swedish furniture. Never seen that before.

Two Gentlemen of Verona is Shakespeare’s first romantic comedy. You will probably remember some bits of it from the movie Shakespeare in Love. The soliloquy which Gwyneth Paltrow uses in her audition for the role of Romeo is from Two Gentlemen. And the play that’s being performed for the queen early on is also Two Gentlemen. “Love and a bit with a dog.” I believe that was also the Farrelly brothers philosophy when they wrote There’s Something About Mary.

The Two Gentlemen are Valentine and Proteus. Valentine is headed to Milan to learn to be a gentleman. He tells his buddy Proteus that he’s whipped by his beloved Julia and he should get out there and see the world too. Valentine arrives in Milan and falls in love with the beautiful Sylvia. Proteus gets sent to Milan against his wishes and he falls in love with Sylvia too, despite the fact that he has promised to marry Julia. Proteus plots to betray Valentine and steal Sylvia away. And Julia, believing Proteus’s love sincere, disguises herself as a boy and goes after him in Milan. That’s Act One and Two.

There’re anti-Semitic remarks throughout, there are bad puns and wise-cracking servants, but it is Shakespeare and it's obviously poetic and lovely. Lucetta thusly describes the virtues of Proteus’s love, which he does not oft express: “Fire that’s closest kept burns most of all.” (1:2).

Sylvia plays a neat little game on Valentine. She knows that he loves her, and she asks him to write a letter for her to give to the object of her affection. He is tortured about it, but when he presents her the letter, she gives it back to him, since he is the object of her affection. Hurrah!

If I had a nickel for every time a girl has solicited some romantic speech or trail of compliments from my heart to hers I’d have at least… well, maybe fifty cents. But girls are mysterious and elevated. I know the things I adore about them and I could go on and on in flirtatious metaphor. If I were ever asked to do what Valentine had to do and describe for a girl what she loves about me, well, I think I would fail miserably.

I don’t know how men earn the love of women. Even the girls I’ve been in love with in my life I assume loved me somehow by accident or through some folly in judgment. (At this point they would probably say the same thing). If I had to guess I would say that most girls love the men they do because they seem somehow less offensive than the other options in the moment. And because they’re loyal. I imagine loyalty is an essential quality as well... because men are dogs.

So far I like the play. Proteus is getting ready to take action and hurt all of his friends, which should make for some entertaining speech-making and skullduggery. Proteus says: “Love bade me swear, and love bids me foreswear.” (2:6) He’s too susceptible to the whims of love, which are always irrational and too often hypocritical.

Self-Improvement, Masturbation, and Two Gentlemen

            This year I’m going to read everything ever written by William Shakespeare.

            I’m not exactly sure why or what I’m going to gain from this endeavor. I assume it’s going to help me score with chicks and it’s going to make me seem more pretentious at parties when I allude off-handedly to a soliloquy from Two Gentlemen of Verona.

I’m down with that.

I live in LA, so many of the parties I go to are attended by people who’ve performed in crummy Shakespeare productions in high schools and regional theaters (I myself was nearly cast as Hamlet at the Lakeside Players in Kenosha, Wisconsin in a run that ended in a divorce and a voluntary commitment to a mental health institution – more on that later) so I’m just trying to catch up.

            It’s an exercise in self-improvement. And if Tyler Durden is to be believed “Self-improvement is masturbation.” But what’s wrong with masturbation? If God didn’t want us to masturbate he wouldn’t have given us hands. Actually, according to my fifth grade Catholic school religion teacher, Mrs. Kramer, there’s a lot wrong with masturbation.

Fifth grade was the year when religion class was first substituted out for sex ed for part of the spring. I think our sex ed books were actually called “Creation Education” or something. There was certainly no mention of sex at all on the front cover, just a picture of a first trimester fetus that looked more like a tadpole than a person. Mrs. Kramer told us that sex and the pleasure of sex was one of God’s most precious gifts and trying to get that feeling by yourself – and this is almost a direct quote – “well, God forgives everything, but if there were one unforgivable sin… that would be it.”

            Wow.

            And they wonder why Catholics walk around wracked with guilt. So basically by the time I was 13 I figured I was hell-bound, because there was no way I was ever going to get absolved by confessing to Father Vince what I was doing when I stayed up late watching Cinemax on Saturday nights. And by the time I was 15 I decided all that Catholic mumbo-jumbo about hell weren’t for me no how. Cause what’s the fun in being alive if you can’t do something for yourself once in a while?

            So, that’s why I’m gonna read all these plays and sonnets and other things. I’m even going to read the plays that Mr. Shakespeare is believed to have contributed to, cause as Tom Sawyer might say: there ain’t no point in doing the thing if you ain’t gonna do it right.

            I don’t have any particular order or idea of exactly how I’m going to schedule this or go about the whole thing. I’m winging it. I might get thrown off the mission for a bit to re-read Watership Down, or some new book. I also work 60 hours a week and write screenplays and stories and plays, but I’ll try to spare you any discussion of that nonsense.

            It starts today, Halloween 2009, with Two Gentlemen of Verona.

Oh, and besides that one little affront, Mrs. Kramer was an excellent teacher. Strict, tough, and missed.