The Two Gentlemen of Verona it starred Tyler Butterworth as Proteus, John Hudson as Valentine, Tessa Peake-Jones as Julia and Joanne Pearce as Silvia. For the most part, the adaptation is taken "verbatim" from the "First Folio", with some very minor differences. For example, omitted lines include the Duke's "Knowing that tender youth is soon suggested" (3.1.34), and Julia's "Her eyes are grey as glass, and so are mine" (4.4.189). Other differences include a slightly different opening scene to that indicated in the text. Whereas the play seems to open with Valentine and Proteus in mid-conversation, the adaptation begins with Mercatio and Eglamour attempting to
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