MASTER THAT HE WAS, Shakespeare still didn't begin his career writing masterpieces, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona gives proof to that. In the past, critics spent a good deal of time trying to prove that "someone else" had written the parts of this play that are confusing, stiff, or downright silly. But even Shakespeare was once young and fallible, and this play is generally accepted now as a very early--if not the first--work of a great writer still marshalling his powers.

True, even bad Shakespeare outdistances most of the pack, and Two Gentlemen could work onstage given sensitive direction and excellent acting. But most companies wisely steer clear of this play and opt for better known and better loved works that can carry their own weight. A performance of Two Gentlemen, in its original form (a musical version was produced here two years ago), is a justifiably rare bird.

Unfortunately, The Boston Shakespeare Company's production of Two Gentlemen falls headlong into the traps set by the flawed script. If many of Shakespeare's works invite reinterpretation, this one almost demands it. However, director William Lacey opts for a traditional construction of the script, playing much of it merely for laughs, and thus fails to adequately explore the darker side of the comedy or compensate for its flaws.

The flaws lie in Shakespeare's clumsy handling of the central plot. The two gentlemen, Proteus and Valentine, represent two conventional types of young Renaissance men: Proteus, the languid romantic, and Valentine, the seeker after honor. In the first scene, Valentine chides Proteus for wasting his youth on love and idleness before sailing for Milan to attend the Emperor--who later turns out to be a Duke in an odd but minor discrepancy. After an interlude with Proteus's lover, Julia, Shakespeare has Proteus sent off to Milan to follow in Valentine's footsteps.

In the meantime, predictably enough, the scorner of love falls like a clay pigeon for Silvia, the lovely daughter of the Duke, and his love throes are even more tortured and ludicrous than Proteus's. But when Proteus arrives he, too, is smitten by Silvia's beauty, resolves to lose his friend, Julia, and himself to win her. The rest of the play revolves around Proteus's despicable betrayals of friend and lover in his attempt to have the reluctant Silvia.

In the climactic scene, Proteus tries to rape Silvia in the woods only to be discovered by Valentine. Here Shakespeare resorts to implausible devices to save this play as comedy, because no sooner does Proteus make a lame apology than Valentine forgives him all, and offers to give him Silvia in the bargain. Deus ex Machina, in the form of the Duke, restores order, and all the right couples reunite happily, apparently suffering from collective amnesia as far as the past four acts are concerned.

An under-developed sub-plot of servants and their affairs obliquely satirizes the main plot, but it cannot offset the blunders. Lightning quick changes in character, contradictions swept aside with the wave of a hand, and outright lame poetry seriously mar this work. Given such a weak vessel, the Boston Company can be forgiven much, but their unimaginative and overly simplistic approach does little to salvage this play.

The central failure in the production is Steven Aveson's Proteus. Saddled with a part that is admittedly difficult to portray convincingly, Aveson capitulates and portrays almost no character at all. He stands around with his chest thrust out and his eyes fixed on the overhead lights, looking like a linebacker at a frat party. He delivers his speeches with hardly any grasp of the emotional contradictions that torment Proteus and can only smile dumbly and bounce on his toes, as he does in the climactic scene at the end, to show that his character is disturbed.

Henry Woronicz as Valentine manages to breathe a bit more life into his role, especially after the first act. Though he looks like an emaciated Ted Baxter--complete with stiff face and silver hair--he carries off the more serious side of Valentine adequately. Woronicz provides a decent opposite to Catherine Rust's marvelous Silvia. Echoing Juliet's poignancy, Silvia is the best realized character in Shakespeare's script, and Rust does the part justice and more. Her voice shakes with genuine emotion and her gestures have none of the stiffness that hampers the rest of the cast. She saves the production from utter desuetude.

Another character who pulls the show up is Launce, a simple servant whose devotion to his dog, Crab, serves as an ironic commentary on Proteus's infidelity. Greg Cattell Johnson steals the show with his charmingly moronic performance, particularly in his first scene where he laments leaving his family and berate's his dog's lack of emotion. Even the dog gets laughs, yawning and wagging his tail on cue.

The other clown, Speed, played by Paul Dunn, is not so funny. Dunn speaks Shakespeare's prose like an AM radio announcer reading a Datsun ad. What is worse, Lacey has him stand at all times with his weight on one leg and the other knee thrust out at a right angle. Every line or so he shifts his weight. The effect becomes very distracting, and makes Dunn look like he needs a trip to the john.

Kirsten Giroux's Julia is somewhat too petulant and childish in the first two acts, but when she disguises herself as a page to pursue Proteus, she makes more of her part and ends up being pleasantly engaging. The rest of the cast, with one exception, is conventional, adequate, and relatively nondescript.

That one exception is David Michael Berti as Sir Eglamour, the bit part knight who helps Silvia escape in Act V. He leaps on stage wearing silver boots, a white cape, silver leggings and a white tunic with a heraldic device on the front. Shazzam! It's Disco Superman! The house howled at every word. Berti played it to the hilt, flourishing his cape and pouncing about the stage like Batman, delivering his lines with Marvel Comics bravado. As comedy this bogus touch was great, but as Shakespeare it seemed rather strained and out of sorts with the prevailing traditionalism. Lacey apparently decided to cast continuity aside and go for a big, bargain-rate laugh with an expendable character.

Unfortunately, the director's overall interpretation of Two Gentlemen as a light-hearted, guileless pastoral undercuts the good performances by imposing shallowness on the production. When even the senex irotus figures chase after serving maids the integrity of the play gets undermined and the whole thing tends toward farce.

Farce does present itself as an option in performing this troublesome play, but it is a too facile interpretation. The Boston Shakespeare Company falls somewhere between farce and a successfully realized dramatic presentation. As it is, the production averages out to mediocrity; a relatively uninspired rendition of a relatively uninspired play. Perhaps The Boston Shakespeare Company should have done Shakespeare and themselves a favor and allowed Two Gentlemen of Verona to remain in the oblivion it so sadly deserves.