Ghost character that when Shakespeare dramatised the poem and expanded Mercutio's role, he introduced a brother for him in order to suggest a more fraternal character. Shakespeare appears to be the first dramatist to have used the name Valentine prior to "Romeo and Juliet", but he himself had actually used the name previously. In "Two Gentlemen of Verona", a play about two brothers and also set in Verona, Valentine is a true and constant lover and Proteus is a fickle one. While not primarily based on it, "Two Gentlemen of Verona" adapts several incidents from Brooke's poem, and in all these instances
Characters of Shakespear's Plays play is an exact transcript of what might be supposed to have taken place at the court of Denmark [...]." In "Troilus and Cressida", by a comparison with Chaucer's method of depicting character, he explains in detail how Shakespeare's idea of "character" is not fixed, and Shakespeare shows the characters not only by their own behaviour but as they view and react to one another. Likewise, Shakespeare's attention was not merely to habitual outward behaviour, but to the most transitory, fleeting inward impressions. "Shakespear exhibited [...] not only what things are in themselves, but whatever they might seem to be,