Well, that was an afternoon

Proteus:

"O, how this spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day;

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away."

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (I, iii, 84-87)

A few lines from the end of Act I we get the passage that suggests April is the month to read this very short play. So I did. Today.

The poetry is wonderful, the language supple, beautiful, and fluent, and the thing is stuffed with contests and sallies of wit from start to finish.

To the point of tedium, actually.

There is no action to speak of and the plot, such as it is, doesn’t begin until the top of Act III.

Between Acts II and III I went for a walk at the Bridgeville upper mall, the one with the Longhorn Steak House, the LA Fitness, and the Big Lots whose main entrance is across Washington Road from an Arby’s my late wife used to like.

Just wanted to walk around a different parking lot.

Afterwards, went for an extended drive before going home.

70 degrees F and beautiful, it was, in the burbs of Pittsburgh.

Anyway, finished the play in not much more than two hours or so and had supper, too, after that.

And I must say I agree with Harold Bloom the plot and main characters make this play too slight and silly to even be absurd, morally as well as otherwise.

It is what it is and not everything in Shakespeare is really much good.

Oh, racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny, too.

But those three are everywhere in Shakespeare.

More shallow than a sidewalk puddle, this play.