In the second scene of the third act there is a phrase from the hero, Antipholus of Syracuse, about Adriana which I find significant:
“She that doth call me husband, even my soul
Doth for a wife abhor!”
There is no reason in the comedy for such strong words. Most men would be amused or pleased by a woman who makes up to them as Adriana makes up to Antipholus. I hear Shakespeare in this uncalled-for, over-emphatic “even my soul doth for a wife abhor.”
In the fifth act Adriana is brought before the Abbess, and is proved to be a jealous scold. Shakespeare will not be satisfied till some impartial great person of Adriana's own sex has condemned her. Adriana admits that she has scolded her husband in public and in private, too; the Abbess replies:
“And thereof came it that the man was mad.”
And she adds:
“The venom clamours of a jealous woman
Poisons more deadly than a mad dog's tooth.”
Again, a needlessly emphatic condemnation. But Adriana will not accept the reproof: she will have her husband at all costs. The whole scene discovers personal feeling. Adriana is the portrait that Shakespeare wished to give us of his wife.
The learned commentators have seemingly conspired to say as little about “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” as possible. No one of them identifies the protagonist, Valentine, with Shakespeare, though all of them identified Biron with Shakespeare, and yet Valentine, as we shall see, is a far better portrait of the master than Biron. This untimely blindness of the critics is, evidently, due to the fact that Coleridge has hardly mentioned “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” and they have consequently been unable to parrot his opinions.
“The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is manifestly a later work than “Love's Labour's Lost”; there is more blank verse and less rhyme in it, and a considerable improvement in character-drawing. Julia, for example, is individualized and lives for us in her affection and jealousy; her talks with her maid Lucetta are taken from life; they are indeed the first sketch of the delightful talks between Portia and Nerissa, and mark an immense advance upon the wordy badinage of the Princess and her ladies in “Love's Labour's Lost,” where there was no attempt at differentiation of character. It seems indubitable to me that “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” is also later than “The Comedy of Errors,” and just as far beyond doubt that it is earlier than “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” in spite of Dr. Furnival's “Trial Table.”