<P> This is also how Roger Warren interprets the final scene . Warren cites a number of productions of the play as evidence for this argument, including Robin Phillips' Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) production in 1970, where Valentine kisses Silvia, makes his offer and then kisses Proteus . Another staging cited by Warren is Edward Hall's 1998 Swan Theatre production . In Hall's version of the scene, after Valentine says the controversial line, Silvia approaches him and takes him by the hand . They remain holding hands for the rest of the play, clearly suggesting that Valentine has not' given' her away . Warren also mentions Leon Rubin's 1984 Stratford Shakespeare Festival production (where the controversial line was altered to "All my love to Silvia I also give to thee"), David Thacker's 1991 Swan Theatre production, and the 1983 BBC Television Shakespeare adaptation as supporting the theory that Valentine is not giving Silvia away, but is simply promising to love Proteus as much as he loves Silvia . Patty S. Derrick also interprets the BBC production in this manner, arguing that "Proteus clearly perceives the offer as a noble gesture of friendship, not an actual offer, because he does not even look towards Silvia but rather falls into an embrace with Valentine" (although Derrick does raise the question that if Valentine is not offering Silvia to Proteus, why does Julia swoon?). </P> <P> There are other theories regarding this final scene, however . For example, in his 1990 edition of the play for the New Cambridge Shakespeare, Kurt Schlueter suggests that Valentine is indeed handing Silvia over to Proteus, but the audience is not supposed to take it literally; the incident is farcical, and should be interpreted as such . Schlueter argues that the play provides possible evidence it was written to be performed and viewed primarily by a young audience, and as such, to be staged at university theatres, as opposed to public playhouses . Such an audience would be more predisposed to accepting the farcical nature of the scene, and more likely to find humorous the absurdity of Valentine's gift . As such, in Schlueter's theory, the scene does represent what it appears to represent; Valentine does give Silvia to her would - be rapist, but it is done purely for comic effect . </P> <P> Another theory is provided by William C. Carroll in his 2004 edition for the Arden Shakespeare, Third Series . Carroll argues, like Schlueter, that Valentine is indeed giving Silvia to Proteus, but unlike Schlueter, Carroll detects no sense of farce . Instead, he sees the action as a perfectly logical one in terms of the notions of friendship which were prevalent at the time: </P> <P> the idealisation of male friendship as superior to male - female love (which was considered not romantic or compassionate but merely lustful, hence inferior) performs a project of cultural nostalgia, a stepping back from potentially more threatening social arrangements to a world of order, a world based on a' gift' economy of personal relations among male social equals rather than one based on a newer, less stable economy of emotional and economic risk . The offer of the woman from one male friend to another would therefore be the highest expression of friendship from one point of view, a low point of psycho - sexual regression from another . </P>

Main characters of the two gentlemen of verona