Proteus Richard III in the play "Henry VI, Part Three", in which the future usurper boasts: Shakespeare also names one of the main characters of his play "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" Proteus. Inconsistent with his affections, his deceptions have unraveled at the finale of the play as he is brought face-to-face with his friend Valentine and original love Julia: In 1807, William Wordsworth finished his sonnet on the theme of a modernity deadened to Nature, which opens "The world is too much with us", with a sense of nostalgia for the lost richness of a world numinous with deities: In
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