I content that the &lt;verbatim&gt; rendering is correct and that it is
your expectation of wha &lt;verbatim&gt; is suppose to do that is wrong.
To this end, I have attempted to clarify the documentation on &lt;verbatim&gt;:

<blockquote>
The &lt;verbatim&gt; tag works like &lt;pre&gt; with the addition
that it also disables all wiki and HTML markup
through the matching &lt;/verbatim&gt;.
</blockquote>