Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate by comparative analysis that Shakespeare had a very clear idea of the love and friendship conflict which he allowed to co-exist in his The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Those who have denied that he is the author of the so-called artistically inadequate final scene of the play have failed to understand thoroughly both the literary fashion of Elizabethan times and the impending influence of the writers of antiquity who were reasserting themselves through the translations of the Renaissance classical enthusiasts. While modern philosophers have only the word love, often used ambiguously to mean desire, friendship, or charity, the Greeks carefully distinguished between these different kinds of associations by using more explicit terminology, such as eros, phi 1ia, and agape. Eros has been defined as man's desire for physical satisfaction in its lowest form; its predominant characteristic is egocentricity. Agape is the pure, disinterested all embracing love which has no concern for self but concentrates entirely on the love object. Eros, therefore, is possessive while agape is sacrificial. A third type of friendship called philia, which Aristotle found.the most satisfying to experience, is "a mutual relation, a bond which links two centres of consciousness in one." In Renaissance symbolism the eros stood for earthly love, while agape represented heavenly love. Philia, then, is the term most apt to describe the generous, soul-exalting, unselfish passion which existed in the friendships which Shakespeare and others of his time wrote about.