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.
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