George Wickham from the "paradise" of his childhood. It is also possible that Jane Austen was influenced, for the relationship between Wickham and Darcy, by Proteus and Valentine, "The Two Gentlemen of Verona", created by Shakespeare; at least, that is the opinion of Laurie Kaplan, who recalls how subtly Jane Austen borrows from the Shakespearean comedy. Proteus, though a son of a gentleman, is intoxicated by the facilities and the luxury of the Court of Milan, where he has been sent by his father, and behaves very badly towards his childhood friend, Valentine, betraying and slandering him, causing his exile, while Valentine
The Two Gentlemen of Verona charm." Other critics have been less kind however, arguing that if the later plays show a skilled and confident writer exploring serious issues of the human heart, "Two Gentlemen" represents the initial, primarily unsuccessful attempt to do likewise. In 1921, for example, J. Dover Wilson and Arthur Quiller-Couch, in their edition of the play for the Cambridge Shakespeare, famously stated that after hearing Valentine offer Silvia to Proteus "one's impulse, upon this declaration, is to remark that there are, by this time, "no" gentlemen in Verona." H.B. Charlton, writing in 1938, argues that "clearly, Shakespeare's first attempt to make romantic