This play is usually dismissed by critics as insignificant, but it is perfectly adapted for successful performance and we have found it can entertain even with youthful and inexperienced actors matching the stereotypical roles. Lively Julia (see Constance Benson in the role) is a prototype to provide the amusing ambiguities of a girl disguised as as boy to which Shakespeare is so addicted in his later comedies. Her humorous maid Lucetta is the classic sceptical companion, like Nerissa and Celia. Poised Sylvia is the iconic beloved. Valentine's naive virtue is the perfect foil to Proteus with his provocative shiftiness, which provides the play's drive and psychological provocation. Most of the other characters are traditional: the Duke of Milan is the classic heavy father: the obtuse wooer Thurio anticipates Clothen in Cymbeline; the sly servants Speed and Launce are straight out of the commedia dell'arte (plus a cute dog; see him in these productions from 1785 and 1895). The convenient outlaws and Sir Eglamour are merely ridiculous in an inoffensive way. But within these familiar conventions Shakespeare strings together a neat series of classic set pieces which succeed readily on stage, however critics sneer. The usual point of maximum censure is Valentine's offer of his mistress to the supposedly repentant Proteus after he has attempted to rape her in the forest, but in our experience in staging the play this aberration passes as a mere momentary youthful eccentricity when the action is sped to its conclusion.