Characters in Romeo and Juliet he is given a direct connection to his brother. Although he has a very small role in Shakespeare's play, earlier versions of the story gave him no role or mention at all. In fact, they gave even Mercutio a very minor role. Shakespeare was the first English dramatist to use the name "Valentine" on stage, in his earlier plays, "Titus Andronicus" and "The Two Gentlemen of Verona". In "Titus", Valentine plays a minor role, but in "Two Gentlemen", he is one of the title characters. Incidentally, the Valentine of "Two Gentlemen" borrows heavily from Arthur Brooke's Romeus in "The Tragical
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