Two Gentlemen of Verona

A contemporary translation of one of Shakespeare’s earliest explorations of love and friendship.

In one of his earliest plays, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare began exploring themes of love and friendship that became the focus of some of his greatest works. Amelia Roper’s translation focuses on how the verse sounds—the feeling of the words as spoken by an actor and listened to by an audience. This version offers a new sort of life to the play, letting audiences feel like they’re truly hearing it as Shakespeare’s audience might have more than four hundred years ago.

This translation of Two Gentlemen of Verona was written as part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Play On! project, which commissioned new translations of thirty-nine Shakespeare plays. These translations present the work of “The Bard” in language accessible to modern audiences while never losing the beauty of Shakespeare’s verse. Enlisting the talents of a diverse group of contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and dramaturges from diverse backgrounds, this project reenvisions Shakespeare for the twenty-first century. These volumes make these works available for the first time in print—a new First Folio for a new era.

Amelia Roper is an award-winning Australian playwright and screenwriter. She has worked on productions for Netflix, Apple TV, and Hulu. She is the author of many plays including Zürich, Lottie in the Late Afternoon, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, and Big Sky Town.