The last couplet, too, which I
have also put in italics, is manifestly a reflection on his betrayal: it
is a twin rendering of the feeling expressed in sonnet 40:
"And yet love knows it is a greater grief
To bear love's wrong than hate's known injury."
It contrasts "foe and friend," just as the sonnet contrasts "love and
hate."
Mr. Israel Gollancz declares that "several critics are inclined to
attribute this final scene to another hand," and to his mind "it bears
evident signs of hasty composition." No guess could be wider from the
truth. The scene is most manifestly pure Shakespeare--I take the
soliloquy of Valentine, with which the scene opens, as among
Shakespeare's most characteristic utterances--but the whole scene is
certainly later than the rest of the play. The truth probably is that
after his friend had deceived him, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" was
played again, and that Shakespeare rewrote this last scene under the
influence of personal feeling. The 170 lines of it are full of phrases
which might be taken direct from the sonnets.
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