The Two Gentlemen of Verona understandable when one considers the cultural and social "milieu" of the play itself. Language is of primary importance in the play insofar as Valentine and Proteus speak in blank verse, but Launce and Speed speak (for the most part) in prose. More specifically, the actual content of many of the speeches serve to illustrate the pompousness of Valentine and Proteus' exalted outlook, and the more realistic and practical outlook of the servants. This is most apparent in Act 3, Scene 1. Valentine has just given a lengthy speech lamenting his banishment and musing on how he cannot possibly survive without
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