Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus Valentine Rescuing Sylvia from Proteus is an 1851 oil painting by William Holman Hunt. It depicts a scene from William Shakespeare's "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". The top left and right portions of the frame include excerpts from act V, scene IV of the play. From left to right, the characters are Julia, disguised as a page, Sylvia, Valentine, and Proteus, who is in love with Julia. Sylvia's father, the Duke of Milain, and a group of followers are present in the background. The painting was on display at the Royal Academy in 1851, then
Characters of Shakespear's Plays room for [...] worse than needless additions" from other plays, often not by Shakespeare, "many of the most striking passages in the real play have been omitted by the foppery and ignorance of the prompt-book critics." Viewing it as the stage presentation of a story, he finds this play is damaged by these manipulations, as, in Shakespeare's original, the "arrangement and developement of the story, and the mutual contrast and combination of the "dramatis personae", are in general as finely managed as the developement of the characters or the expression of the passions." He remarks on another kind of editing—what