Two Gentlemen of Verona

Proteus is a young, sheltered nobleman from Verona. Best friend to Valentine and lover of Julia, he betrays both of these relationships when he falls in love with Silvia. Proteus is characterized by his naivete and his disloyalty to both women and men. At the beginning of the play, Shakespeare depicts Proteus as a naive and sheltered young man. While other young men his age, like Valentine, have gone out to seek their fortunes, Proteus remains in Verona; his father openly worries that Proteus “cannot be a perfect man, not being tried and tutored in the world” (1.3.20-21). Proteus’s resistance to his father’s plans provides further evidence of his sheltered nature. Proteus offers a stark contrast to Valentine, as Proteus himself admits: Valentine “leaves his friends to dignify them more, I leave myself, my friends, and all for love” (1.1.64-65). While Valentine leaves Verona to improve his reputation and that of his friends, Proteus thinks only of himself and of Julia.

Although Proteus exchanges rings and vows with Julia before he leaves Verona, promising “true constancy” (2.3.8), he falls in love with Silvia almost immediately. Proteus explicitly frames his love for Silvia as a betrayal of Julia: “as one nail by strength drives out another, so the remembrance of my former love is by a newer object quiet forgotten” (2.4.187). He is almost cartoonishly cruel in his rejection of Julia, vowing to “forget that Julia is alive, remembering that my love to her is dead” (2.6.27-28). Proteus’s betrayal of Julia is so complete that when Silvia asks him about her, he claims that Julia actually is dead. At the end of the play, Proteus acknowledges his own disloyalty, claiming that Julia is more beautiful than Silvia when he looks with “a constant eye” (5.4.113). Proteus’s betrayal of Julia, love for Silvia, and redeclaration of love for Julia demonstrates his inconstant, disloyal nature and place him at the center of the play’s portrayal of The Fickle Nature of Young Love.

Proteus is also disloyal to his best friend Valentine, revealing Valentine’s plan to elope with Silvia to her father the Duke, and this betrayal gives him more pain than his betrayal of Julia. Although he questions whether he’s truly breaking oaths to the women, he is confident that he “shall be much forsworn” (2.6.3) for his treatment of Valentine. Crucially, Proteus does not apologize to Julia for betraying her or for threatening to assault Silvia. His only direct apology is to Valentine, suggesting that he considers his disloyalty to his friend to be his biggest crime, emphasizing the play’s thematic interest in The Importance of Loyalty Between Men.

Silvia is the daughter of the Duke of Milan and the beloved of Valentine, Thurio, and later Proteus. She is the primary female protagonist of the play, characterized by her clever ability to manipulate the restrictions of her position and her loyalty to not only Valentine but also Julia. Like Julia, Silvia is intimately aware of the restrictions placed on her as a noblewoman: As the daughter of a Duke, she must be polite to all of her suitors in order to maintain peace, and she cannot show favor to someone of whom her father does not approve. While Julia removes the restrictions by leaving Verona and dressing like a boy, Silvia manipulates the restrictions in order to suit her own needs. Because she cannot express her true feelings to Valentine, a relative newcomer in Milan, she orders him to write a love letter, ostensibly for her to deliver to another man. Silvia then refuses the letter and tells Valentine to keep it, thereby ensuring that he receives a letter stating her true feelings for him. The “excellent device” (2.1.119) of the letter trick demonstrates Silvia’s clever ability to manipulate the restrictions of her situation. The fact that Valentine does not immediately pick up on the “unseen, inscrutable, invisible” (2.1.115) letter trick also indicates her wit and quick thinking.

Silvia’s loyalty to Valentine throughout the play offers a stark contrast to Proteus’s immediate betrayal of Julia. However, Silvia is also notably loyal to Julia, a woman she has never met. Silvia’s loyalty to Julia mirrors the play’s thematic interest in The Importance of Loyalty Between Men. Silvia rejects Proteus’s advances by intentionally redirecting his attention back to Julia, whom she calls his “first, best love” (5.4.46). Her repeated references to him as “false” (as in 4.2.86, 4.4.122, and 5.4.39) also highlight his initial betrayal of Julia as the reason for Silvia’s rejection. Silvia’s insistence that Proteus remain loyal to Julia is itself evidence of her loyalty to her fellow women. While Proteus abandons his friend to pursue a woman, Silvia rejects Proteus in order to preserve the dignity of a woman she has not even met, drawing attention to this difference in their characters: “though his false finger hath profaned the ring, mine shall not do his Julia so much wrong” (5.4.122-23). Silvia’s loyalty offers a stark contrast to Proteus’s willingness to betray his friend, and suggests that, in the world of the play, loyalty between women proves stronger than loyalty between men.