The Two Gentlemen of Verona is a comedy by William Shakespeare from early in his career. It has the smallest cast of any of Shakespeare's plays, and is the first of his plays in which a heroine dresses as a boy. It deals with the themes of friendship and infidelity. The highlight of the play is considered by some to be Lance, the clownish servant of Proteus, and his dog Crab, to whom "the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon" has been attributed.
In writing The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare drew on a Spanish prose romance Diana Enamorada by the Portuguese writer Jorge de Montemayor. This work was published in 1559, was translated into French in 1578, and was published in English in 1598, though the translation was made several years earlier. It is believed that Shakespeare could have read the story in French, or in an unpublished English version, or could have learned of it from an anonymous English play of 1585, The History of Felix and Philiomena, which is now lost.
In the second book of Diana Enamorada, Don Felix loves Felismena, and sends her a letter. Like Julia, Felismena pretends to reject the letter, and to be annoyed with her maid. Like Proteus, Felix is sent away by his father, and is followed by Felismena, who, disguised as a boy, becomes his page, and has the pain of learning of his new love for Celia, and of being sent to Celia as a messenger for Felix. The two lovers are reconciled at the end, after a combat in a wood, though Celia, having no counterpart to Valentine (or to Sebastian in Twelfth Night), falls in love with the supposed page, and dies of grief.
