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
Proteus shape-changing, has much in common with the central but elusive figure of alchemy, Mercurius. The poet John Milton, aware of the association of Proteus with the Hermetic art of alchemy, wrote in "Paradise Lost" of alchemists who sought the philosopher's stone: In his 1658 discourse "The Garden of Cyrus", Sir Thomas Browne, pursuing the figure of the quincunx, queried: "Why Proteus in Homer the Symbole of the first matter, before he settled himself in the midst of his Sea-Monsters, doth place them out by fives?" Shakespeare uses the image of Proteus to establish the character of his great royal villain