The Two Angry Families of Verona

Abstract

Dyce, in his edition of the play, supplies the note: recollection, perhaps, of Shakespeare's and Juliet, act iii. sc.5: 'I would the fool were married to her grave!' Of the later editors, W. C. Hazlitt2 and Havelock Ellis3 reprint the note without acknowledgment, but C. M. Gayley4 attempts to define Porter's supposed debt to Shakespeare more narrowly and educes parallels with A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Merchant of Venice, and Henry the Fourth, besides extending those with and Juliet. Rather hesitantly he suggests that the conversation between Frank and Mall Barnes at her window may be a good-natured burlesque of the famous balcony scene, that the loves of the children of the two angry women may in fact parody the motif of and Juliet. Further, he detects a verbal parallel: Romeo seems to be muttering in his sleep through Philip's soliloquy:-