The Two Noble Kinsmen – A. J. Drake's Shakespeare Site

Act 1 Synopsis: A tragic dimension enters with the lamentations and demands of three widowed queens who intrude on Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding rites in Athens, while the play’s concentration on the tension between heterosexual marriage and same-sex friendship comes into play as we learn about Theseus and Pirithous, Palamon and Arcite, and Hippolyta and Emilia as well as Emilia and Flavina. The tensions involved in Palamon and Arcite’s chivalric honor code begin to appear as well.

Prologue (463, the prologue speaker makes a novel comparison between good plays and maidenheads, and expresses anxiety about the current play’s ability to do justice to its great source, Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale.”)

The prologue-speaker compares the initial rolling out of a play to the experience of a virgin giving up her maidenhead’s intact state. The idea is that if a play is good, there’s no loss in the experience of it. So, too, does chastity (female honor) survive the wedding night, with no harm done and more enjoyment ahead. In a sense, then, while the play’s subject involves different kinds of romantic excess, the authors themselves take a practical, even businesslike, view of sexual experience.

The prologue-speaker also admits to some anxiety about the company’s ability to do justice to the source of The Two Noble Kinsmen, Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale.” [1] This anxiety does not run very deep, though, since a little audience applause will provide the necessary wind for a successful “tack” (463, Prologue 26) by the players, allowing them to stage an entertaining story of some two hours’ length.

Act 1, Scene 1 (464-70, Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding procession grinds to a halt when three queens kneel and seek Theseus’s support for the burial of their dead husbands who, for warring against the Theban king, Creon, remain unburied; Hippolyta and Emilia add their voices to persuade Theseus to undertake this holy errand without delay.)

The sway of ritual is a major interest of Shakespeare and John Fletcher in The Two Noble Kinsmen, as we can easily see at its outset. Under the watchful eye of Hymen, the god of marriage, Duke Theseus of Athens enters, followed by the conquered Amazon Queen, Hippolyta, chaperoned by a nymph “holding a garland over her head.” A boy sings a song paying tribute to flowers and herbs, and just the right kinds of birds—ones that qualify as “Bird melodious, or bird fair …” (464, 1.1.17). [2]

But then, three queens dressed and veiled in black kneel in front of Theseus, then Hippolyta, and finally Hippolyta’s sister, Emilia. We now have a funereal spectacle, three participants in ritual lamentation, interrupting a joyous wedding procession. Theseus asks the first queen to speak for the rest, and she explains that she and the others want him to overcome “The wrath of cruel Creon” (465, 1.1.40) that still manifests itself in impiety even after his Theban forces have won their battle against invaders. Creon has, she explains, refused proper burial to their husbands. [3]

Theseus recognizes the first queen as Evadne, widow of King Capaneus of Argos, one of the famous “Seven Against Thebes.” [4] He pays tribute to her long-lost beauty, and laments the wasting passage of time, saying, “O grief and time, / Fearful consumers, you will all devour!” (465, 1.1.69-70) Theseus is evidently moved at her tale of woe.

Then the second queen makes her plea to Hippolyta, recognizing her prowess in battle but at the same time acknowledging the gender regime that has prevailed for most of human history. She says to Hippolyta, “[thou] wast near to make the male / To thy sex captive, but that this thy lord— / Born to uphold creation in that honor / First nature styled it in—shrunk thee into / The bound thou wast o’er-flowing …” (466, 1.1.80-84). The second queen asks Hippolyta to add her strong female voice to the widows’ pleas, and Hippolyta promises to speak with Theseus at the first opportunity.

Then comes the third queen’s turn. She addresses Hippolyta’s sister, Emilia, and has no trouble convincing her to add her pleas to the cause. Theseus, though himself moved by the queens’ wretchedness, is for the moment strongly inclined to carry on with his and Hippolyta’s wedding. This brings on a desperate protest from all three queens, with outrage-laden language such as “our lords / Lie blist’ring fore the visitating sun …” (467, 1.1.145-46). [5]

This further triplicate of pleading drives Theseus to make a bigger concession, and he orders Artesius to put together a military force appropriate to the mission he must undertake. All the same, he still seems determined to go ahead with his wedding rites, which he calls “This grand act of our life, this daring deed / Of fate in wedlock” (468, 1.1.164-65).

As we might have expected, Theseus’s persistence does not satisfy the widows. They continue to complain, and the first queen insists that once Theseus enjoys making love to Hippolyta on his wedding night, he will forget about the sacred mission to which they have enjoined him: “oh, when / Her twining cherries shall their sweetness fall / Upon thy taste-full lips, what wilt thou think / Of rotten kings or blubbered queens?” (468, 1.1.177-80)

Hippolyta steps up and pleads for the widows, saying that if she doesn’t, “I should pluck / All ladies’ scandal on me” (469, 1.1.191-92). We know that the Amazon Queen is only Theseus’s bride because she and her tribe were conquered in war, so the three queens’ cause has now been enlisted in a gender-based power game. At the least, Hippolyta seems to be suggesting, she should have some influence with her lordly husband, else he does not respect her, or women more generally. Emilia, for her part, adds that she will remain part of Diana’s virgin cult rather than allow such an offense as slighting the three queens.

All this is too much for Theseus, and he gives in, saying, “I am entreating of myself to do / That which you kneel to have me” (469, 1.1.206-07). He assigns his friend Pirithous to make sure that the celebration in Athens will proceed smoothly without him. Theseus’s excellent summation of his reasoning at this point is, “As we are men, / Thus should we do; being sensually subdued, / We lose our human title” (470, 1.1.231-33). Here, Theseus reaffirms the hierarchy of reason and duty over sensuality.

Palamon and Arcite, as we will soon find out, do not act in such a felicitous manner, and their surrender to passion is what creates the genuine drama in this play: they will be only partially protected by the fineness of their chivalric ideals. [6]

Act 1, Scene 2 (470-73, Palamon and Arcite, nephews of King Creon, discuss leaving their corrupt native city, Thebes; word comes that Duke Theseus of Athens is marching against Thebes and seems already to have arrived there, so the two cousins decide that they must defend their city, Creon notwithstanding.)

Palamon and Arcite, nephews to the dishonorable King of Thebes, hash out the difficulties that come with living in a corrupt state. Arcite’s comment is incisive: “here to keep in abstinence we shame / As in incontinence; for not to swim / I’th’ aid o’th’ current were almost to sink …” (470, 1.2.6-8). As the Norton editor explains, Arcite’s meaning is that to remain uncorrupted in a corrupt land is as disadvantageous as behaving corruptly in an uncorrupted one. [7]

Palamon adds to this thought the observation that he sees all around him the shabbily dressed and wretched soldiers who fought for Thebes and now are betrayed by their city and ignored. Why stay in a place that treats its defenders that way? In such a state, says Palamon, a new war might actually function as a purifying element. Would that Juno, long an opponent of Thebes, [8] might “Resume her ancient fit of jealousy / To get the soldier work, that peace might purge / For her repletion and retain anew / Her charitable heart …” (470, 1.2.22-25). [9]

Cousin Palamon’s continued takedown of Thebes and Creon sounds much like many a rant about the corruption of rulers and countries down to Shakespeare’s time. In condemning foppish men who show themselves slaves to corrupt fashion, he says “’Tis in our power … / to / Be masters of our manners …” and “Why am I bound / By any generous bond to follow him / Follows his tailor, haply so long until / The followed make pursuit?” (471, 1.2.42-44, 49-52) Why go broke, as the Norton editor glosses these lines, trying to keep up with the silly fashions of the times?

Of the effect of Creon’s corruption-based leadership style, Palamon says that his uncle’s “successes / Makes heaven unfeared and villainy assured / Beyond its power there’s nothing” and “deifies alone / Voluble chance …” (471, 1.2.63-67). Readers of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida may remember Ulysses’s figure for what happens when leaders despise good order: “Take but degree away, untune that string, / And hark what discord follows!” [10] Under the corrupt and tyrannical ruler Creon, once-great Thebes has become impossible to live in.

Just when both cousins are ready to depart from Thebes—Arcite even says, “Let’s leave his court, that we may nothing share / Of his loud infamy” (472, 1.2.75-76) —Valerius arrives with a message that they’ve been summoned by Creon, who is in a rage at the news of Theseus’s approach. This news puts an end to Palamon and Arcite’s talk of leaving their native land behind. “Our services stand now for Thebes, not Creon …” (472, 1.2.99), says Palamon, and Arcite agrees. They may feel no loyalty towards Creon, but their chivalric honor demands loyalty, at least, to their city.

Act 1, Scene 3 (473-75, Pirithous leaves Athens to fight in Thebes; Hippolyta and her sister Emilia laud the unbreakable bond of friendship between Theseus and Pirithous, and Emilia tells Hippolyta about her own close ties with a girl named Flavina.)

Hippolyta blesses the departure of Pirithous to Athens, where Theseus has gone. She is aware of the close friendship, the amicitia, between these two men, but it does not seem as if she considers it a threat to her relationship with Theseus. [11] She speaks with martial toughness to her husband’s close friend, reminding him that she and Emilia, “have been soldiers …” and proclaiming herself tearless even to mention “women / That have sod [i.e., boiled] their infants in—and after ate them— / The brine they wept at killing ‘em” (473, 1.3.18, 20-22).

Emilia observes of the now-departed Pirithous, “How his longing / Follows his friend!” Hippolyta adds mention of the many hardships the two men have been through together, and declares, “Their knot of love / Tied, weaved, entangled, with so true, so long, / And with a finger of so deep a cunning, / May be outworn, never undone” (474, 1.3.41-44). She is not sure, she says, whether Theseus loves Pirithous more, or her.

Emilia then reminisces about a blissful period of pre-adolescent love with a girl (now dead) named Flavina. Of this girl, she says, “What she liked was then of me approved; what not, condemned …” (474, 1.3.64-65). The two were practically one, and the passage sounds a little like the lovely description Milton would later give of innocent Eve gazing at her own image in a pool of water, like Narcissus: “What thou seest, / What there thou seest fair Creature is thy self, / With thee it came and goes….” Here, though, Shakespeare and Fletcher are not alluding to anything insubstantial or any mildly pejorative “narcissism.” [12]

Emilia affirms the reality of this love when she says, “the true love ‘tween maid and maid may be / More than in sex individual” (475, 1.3.81-82). Hippolyta correctly parses Emilia’s recounting of this love as no more than a shaky insistence that she “shall never, like the maid Flavina, / Love any that’s called man” (475, 1.3.84-85). Emilia may think she can remain a devotee of the cult of the virgin goddess, Diana, but Hippolyta is not convinced. She does believe, however, that when it comes to Theseus, she, and not Pirithous, can rightly claim to “possess / The high throne in his heart” (475, 1.3.95-96).

Act 1, Scene 4 (475-76, Theseus defeats Creon in battle, then bids goodbye to the widowed queens, telling them to gather up their husbands’ remains; the wounded Palamon and Arcite are carried in, and Theseus orders that the best doctors should treat their injuries—he means to imprison the two cousins.)

Theseus emerges as the victor in the battle against Creon at Thebes, and at the city’s outskirts, the three widowed queens kneel and praise him. He tells them to “Go and find out / The bones of your dead lords and honor them / With treble ceremony …” (475, 1.4.6-8). Just then, a carriage wheels up, bearing the near-lifeless bodies of Palamon and Arcite, who, in Theseus’s admiring recounting, fought with nearly superhuman bravery. Declaring that “their lives concern us / Much more than Thebes is worth …” (476, 1.4.32-33), Theseus orders that these two men be given the best possible assistance. A medical miracle, he suggests, may yet be possible.

Act 1, Scene 5 (476-77, the three widowed queens say goodbye to one another, observing the proper funeral rites and marking the necessity of death for all human beings, in due time.)

The funeral rites of the three queens’ dead husbands take place, and the women lament, with one poignant line running, “Our dole more deadly looks than dying” (476, 1.5.3). The queens may be suggesting here that their rites’ stylized acts heighten the reality of death, lending mortality more dignity than it would otherwise have.

The first queen acknowledges the universality of death, saying, “Heavens lend / A thousand differing ways to one sure end” (477, 1.5.13-14). To this, the third queen adds that “This world’s a city full of straying streets, / And death’s the marketplace where each one meets” (477, 1.5.15-16). This is the tragic consciousness of the ancients speaking in somewhat updated form: as Northrop Frye says, “In the tragic vision death … gives shape and form to life.” [13]

ACT 2

Act 2 Synopsis: In the second act, strong passion directs the characters’ plans and efforts. The jailer’s daughter moves far beyond her father’s negotiations with a humble suitor, plunging into an illicit passion that leads her to set Palamon free and scheme to run away with him through the woods. By the act’s conclusion, she will be desperate, on the cusp of the madness that will soon overtake her. Palamon and Arcite articulate their chivalric “Best Friends Forever” bond at length, until Palamon espies Emilia. From then on, they are deadly rivals. By the end of Act 2, both men will be at liberty. Arcite wins a sporting competition and is rewarded with a position as Emilia’s gentleman attendant.

Act 2, Scene 1 (477-78, the jailer speaks with his daughter’s “wooer” about his limited ability to pass along a dowry; the daughter enters with straw for the quarters of the new prisoners, Palamon and Arcite; she is understandably impressed with these two young men.)

The jailer explains to his daughter’s persistent suitor that he doesn’t have much money for a dowry, but the suitor is not put off by this limitation, and seems ready to provide an indication of the daughter’s consent to the match. That will have to wait, though, for a time in the near future when all the wedding and military hubbub is over in Athens, now that Theseus is home.

Both the jailer and his daughter are full of high praise for the new “celebrity” prisoners Palamon and Arcite, with the daughter saying, “the prison itself is proud of ‘em, and they have all / the world in their chamber” (477, 2.1.23-24). Indeed, they will soon say much the same thing of themselves, so close are they as friends and cousins.

The jailer’s daughter closes out the scene with an excellent observation about the noteworthy new prisoners: “It is a holiday to look on them. Lord, the / difference of men!” (478, 2.1.53-54) One hopes she doesn’t say that within easy hearing of the steadfast wooer, but unfortunately, he’s still standing near her when she speaks. In any case, the daughter’s effusive remark resembles what the wicked Goneril says in Act 4.2 of King Lear about the distinction between her husband, Albany, and the passionate “natural” son of Gloucester, Edmund. [14] The jailer’s daughter’s words, however, remain innocent, and free of contempt.

Act 2, Scene 2 (478-85, Palamon and Arcite complain about being in prison, but take consolation from the prospect of greater togetherness; Palamon catches sight of Emilia in the garden, straightaway falls in love, and informs Arcite; when Arcite also falls in love with Emilia, he and Palamon become steadfast rivals; Arcite is set free and banished from Athens, but Palamon is moved to a cell from which he can no longer see Emilia.)

Palamon grieves in Arcite’s presence at the prospect of spending the rest of his life in prison: “Oh, never / Shall we two exercise, like twins of honor, / Our arms again, and feel our fiery horses / Like proud seas under us …” (479, 2.2.17-20). Arcite agrees, but he adds still more things to lament, most particularly “The sweet embraces of a loving wife …” (479, 2.2.30). They will both die, Palamon comes round to saying, as “Children of grief and ignorance” (479, 2.2.55). That is, as the Norton editor glosses the terms, “Sad and unknown.”

Palamon and Arcite are chivalric heroes, so what could be worse than dying in prison, no longer able to demonstrate their worth as men and warriors? We may be reminded of Alfred Tennyson’s fine poem “Ulysses,” wherein the Ithacan king, back home but desperately missing his old adventures in strange places, cries out, “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, / To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use! / As tho’ to breathe were life!” [15]

And yet, that isn’t the only perspective that might be taken, and Arcite soon pivots to a very different view of his and his cousin’s predicament. He sees two great benefits: “to hold here a brave patience, / And the enjoying of our griefs together” (479, 2.2.59-60). As Duke Senior says in As You Like It, Act 2.1, “Sweet are the uses of adversity, / Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, / Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.” [16]

With enough such rhetoric, “captivity” comes to look an awful lot like freedom. Arcite even says that marriage would only come between them: “Were we at liberty, / A wife might part us lawfully, or business …” (480, 2.2.88-89). Arcite goes on to list the things that might break these Renaissance-Era “BFFs” apart. But alone with each other in their mutual cell, there would be no intrusions by others, and their friendship would be long and unperturbed. Says Arcite, “A thousand chances, / Were we from hence, would sever us” (480, 2.2.94-95).

Ordinary life, ordinary society, is disintegrative and corruptive, while the little “society of two” that Palamon and Arcite imagine would last to the end of their lives without degradation or decay. No, they gush, their love is truly exemplary: “Is there a record,” asks Palamon, “of any two that loved / Better than we do, Arcite?” (481, 2.2.114-15) No, there isn’t, replies Arcite. Well, then! As John Donne says in “The Canonization,” “Countries, towns, courts: beg from above / A pattern of your love!” [17]

It’s deliciously ironic, then, that just as the two young men are practically falling over themselves with deep affection, Emilia, strolling in the garden at the base of the prison, asks her waiting-woman what kind of flower both of them presently behold, and the answer comes back, “narcissus.” Emilia’s response to that is, “That was a fair boy, certain, but a fool / To love himself. Were there not maids enough?” (481, 2.2.120-21) Also wonderfully ironic is Emilia’s comment to the waiting-woman, “Men are mad things” (481, 2.2.126). That will be a pretty good description of Palamon and Arcite in no time.

Palamon catches sight of Emilia in the garden, and is at once struck with Cupid’s arrow: “Behold and wonder! / By heaven, she is a goddess” (481, 2.2.133-34). [18] Just then, Emilia says she prefers roses above any other flower, and when asked why, she responds, “It is the very emblem of a maid. / For, when the west wind courts her gently, / How modestly she blows and paints the sun / With her chaste blushes!” (481-82, 137-40) Palamon and Arcite are noticing and talking about the two women, while the latter are concentrating on each other.

Arcite now espies Emilia and at once falls in love. Palamon asks eagerly, “You love her, then?” and is answered, “Who would not?” (482, 2.2.159) As always, there is a strong competitive force at work in desire. As has been said many times, we desire what others desire—that is at least partly what makes someone or something desirable. [19] Palamon is instantly seized with jealousy, and blurts out, “I saw her first.” No matter, says Arcite, “I saw her too” (482, 2.2.160, 162). Both arguments are silly since neither man’s first vision of the lady proves “ownership,” but such is the stuff of immature erotic passion.

Soon, the two knights fall to further articulating their supposed claims on Emilia’s love. Arcite says that Palamon’s desire for Emilia remains abstract, merely ideal, whereas, he says, he himself will “love her as a woman, to enjoy her” (482, 2.2.165). No Petrarchan “impossibly distant love objects” for Arcite!

But Palamon, in return, asserts that his love is superior. Who will keep Arcite from loving Emilia? Why, says Palamon, “I that took possession / First with mine eye of all those beauties …” (482, 2.2.168-70). That’s quite an imperial “gaze” he’s asserting! It almost goes without saying, given that such assumptions are being made, that Emily has not been consulted about who “possesses” her, and in fact she doesn’t know a blessed thing about what is transpiring in the prison cell that holds Palamon and Arcite.

In any case, Palamon now asserts that Arcite would be a “traitor” (482, 2.2.172) if he were even to think about Emilia. This is a dangerous term because it calls into question Arcite’s chivalric honor. Sure enough, that’s the direction the conversation goes in, with Arcite bemoaning the possibility that Palamon would behave towards him—someone who has been practically “another self” to him—in a manner “so unlike a noble kinsman” (483, 2.2.193). What follows amounts to little more than comic wrangling, with some threats thrown in for good measure.

It’s just as well, then, that this wrangling is cut short by the jailer, who enters to tell Arcite that he has been summoned into the presence of Duke Theseus. After Arcite leaves with the jailer, Palamon breaks into a soliloquy about the intensity of his love for Emilia. He would gladly become the little apricot tree in the garden, he says, to be near her: “I would bring her fruit / Fit for the gods to feed on; youth and pleasure / Still as she tasted should be doubled on her …” (484, 2.2.241-43). [20]

Palamon is so wrought-up that he even imagines a gender-role reversal regarding Emilia, saying, “I would do things / Of such a virtuous greatness that this lady, / This blushing virgin, should take manhood to her / And seek to ravish me” (485, 2.2.259-62). Most likely, this means that Emilia would become “like a man” in the audacity of her desire and so would be the dominant partner sexually. Whatever the right interpretation may be, the jailer returns to tell Palamon that he is going to be relocated to a cell with no window overlooking the garden.

Act 2, Scene 3 (485-87, Arcite is determined to stay in Athens rather than leave Emilia behind; several rustics discuss their plans to dance at a Maying festival, and they also mention some games to be held in Theseus’s presence; Arcite will disguise himself and try his luck.)

Arcite feels certain that Palamon, even if he’s still in prison, has the upper hand in their Emilia-related grudge match since, he (wrongly) supposes, that gentleman still enjoys the sight of her and may use his silver-tongued rhetoric to win her to his cause. So he decides to disobey Theseus’s order of banishment: “I will not leave the kingdom,” says he (486, 2.3.18).

Just as he makes this fateful decision, four “countrymen” or rustics arrive on the scene and unwittingly provide Arcite with a way forwards. They engage in the usual bawdy talk, as rustics in Elizabethan-Jacobean plays tend to do, which sorts well with the ancient fertility-based underpinnings of the holidays they celebrate. May Day is coming up, and that’s a spring festival not to be missed! [21] There will also be some sporting competitions in which the rustic men are eager to take part.

Arcite enters the conversation with these men, and decides that the games are his best chance to re-enter Emilia’s proximity. Now he has it! He says, “I’ll venture / And in some poor disguise be there; who knows / Whether my brows may not be girt with garlands, / And happiness prefer me to a place / Where I may ever dwell in sight of her?” (487, 2.3.89-93) Shakespeare’s Pericles from Pericles, Prince of Tyre would approve: shipwrecked and washed ashore at Pentapolis, the young King took an opportunity that some honest fishermen put him on to and, performing spectacularly in a jousting tournament, won the love of King Simonides’s daughter, Thaisa. [22]

Act 2, Scene 4 (487-88, the jailer’s daughter has fallen in love with Palamon, and is set upon freeing him from prison with the aim of winning his love.)

Alone, the jailer’s daughter expresses her strong attraction to the noble prisoner Palamon. As yet, she is in full possession of her faculties, and completely aware that the social rank-based gap between her and Palamon will almost surely doom any chance of their connecting: she asks herself, “Why should I love this gentleman? ‘Tis odds / He never will affect me. I am base …” (487, 2.4.1-2).

Yet, such is the power of attraction that she is set on moving forward with her attempt, come what may. She saw the man, pitied him, and, she says, loved him. The one most likely “courtesy kiss” she has obtained from him is enough to sustain her hopes. What to do? The plan is admirably bold: “Say I ventured / To set him free—what says the law then? Thus much / For law or kindred! I will do it— / And this night, or tomorrow, he shall love me” (488, 2.4.30-33).

The jailer’s daughter’s desire is frankly sexual, as is evident when she gives as the justification for her plan, “I would fain enjoy him” (488, 2.4.30). In this, we can discern a contrast between her story and that of both Palamon and Arcite: she is filled with passion, but does not have access to the relative protection of the chivalric honor code or the courtly love tradition. [23] In this sense, the jailer’s daughter is more vulnerable even than the two knights who would willingly risk all for Emilia: she is capable of romantic idealism, but she is at the mercy of her passions, come what may.

Act 2, Scene 5 (488-90, Arcite, disguised as a “countryman,” wins the games and is rewarded with a courtly position as Emilia’s attendant; everyone is ordered to prepare for tomorrow morning’s May Day celebration.)

When the scene begins, Arcite has already emerged as the victor of the games, and as is traditional in such circumstances, the host, Theseus, asks the young visitor who he is and where he hails from. [24] Arcite replies broadly enough so as not to break his cover, putting himself forth as a gentleman, though not of the nobility, in such phrases as, “I could have kept a hawk, and well have hallooed / To a deep cry of dogs” and “I would be thought a soldier” (489, 2.5.11-12, 15).

Arcite’s athletic and rhetorical skills are sufficient to earn praise from Theseus, Hippolyta, Emilia, and Pirithous, and he is appointed an attendant to Emilia as a birthday present. He is even allowed to kiss her hand—a nice chivalric gesture. Courtly words follow between Emilia and Arcite, and Theseus even warns his sister-in-law not to let herself get carried away with this handsome young gentleman-attendant. She declares herself beyond reproach, saying she is “too wise for that, sir” (490, 2.5.64).

Act 2, Scene 6 (490-91, the jailer’s daughter, having freed Palamon and packed him off to wait for her in the forest, schemes to bring him sustenance and files to remove his shackles; she also means to bring clothes so that they two may flee the realm together.)

The jailer’s daughter has put her plan into action, declaring to the air, “Let all the dukes and all the devils roar; / He is at liberty! I have ventured for him …” (490, 2.6.1-2). So strong is her passion, she says, that she has done a thing that not even a man like her father would do—she has unlawfully set a prisoner free. Let the law condemn her, she says; she is resolute: “I love him beyond love and beyond reason, / Or wit, or safety. I have made him know it …” (490, 2.6.11-12). She loves Palamon excessively, and has cast caution and legal danger to the winds.

The daughter means to bring Palamon some provisions and a file to free himself from his shackles, and she is clearly hoping for a sexual encounter and some gratitude from the object of her desire. Thus far, she says, she has received from Arcite no acknowledgement for her efforts, which is ominous: “And yet he has not thanked me / For what I have done; no, not so much as kissed me, / And that, methinks, is not so well …” (490, 2.6.21-23). We can begin to sense the deep disappointment that will soon drive the jailer’s daughter beyond sanity.

ACT 3

Act 3 Synopsis: Arcite and Palamon’s opposition intensifies, with Palamon mostly disdaining chivalric courtesy, and Arcite magnanimously helping Palamon recover his strength in anticipation of their deadly fight. Just when it seems their duel might take place in the woods, Theseus finds the two men and transforms the match into a more elaborate, but still lethal, tournament for the hand of Emilia. The jailer’s daughter becomes increasingly unhinged as her disappointments and fears take possession of her, until she finally goes mad and raves. In the midst of all this heavy action, Gerald the Schoolmaster and his troop provide an excellent May Day Morris dance for Theseus and his court.

Act 3, Scene 1 (491-94, Arcite encounters Palamon in the forest where the Maying celebration is being held; the meeting results in a personal challenge to trial by combat over Emilia; harsh words are spoken, but Arcite says he will bring provisions and files to Palamon.)

Arcite enters alone as the forest resounds with people “a-Maying.” He reckons up the blessings that flow from being Emilia’s attendant, and feels sorry for Palamon, whom he imagines is still locked up in prison. But Palamon almost immediately appears from behind a bush, still shackled, and the first two words out of his mouth are “Traitor kinsman …” (492, 3.1.30). Those words are aimed, of course, at Arcite, who speaks kindly to his cousin but is only insulted the more for it.

Palamon clings tightly to his grudge against Arcite, and asks him to degrade his courteous language the better to fit his allegedly villainous, unchivalric conduct. Almost comically, however, Palamon still expects Arcite to be more than generous—he asks for “a sword” and “the charity / Of one meal” (493, 3.1.72-74) so that he may be in decent fighting shape to slay his cousin. This comes close to the antics of the Monty Python players. [25] And when Arcite brings the sword, let him do so, says Palamon, “with a bent brow” (493, 3.1.101), not with decorous words and gestures that violate the chivalric code by their poor fit with base intentions.

Act 3, Scene 2 (494-95, the jailer’s daughter can’t find Palamon, and fears that he has been killed by forest predators; fearing also that her father will be condemned for the escape, she lapses into despair, and thence into madness.)

The jailer’s daughter searches for Palamon, but he’s nowhere to be found in the woods. She is in desperate straits now, but assesses her condition with precision: “In me hath grief slain fear and, but for one thing, / I care for nothing—and that’s Palamon” (494, 3.2.5-6). It may be that wolves have already dined upon a helpless Palamon, thinks the jailer’s daughter—a reasonable assumption in a dangerous wood. [26] She worries about her father, too, since he’s apt to be blamed for Palamon’s escape and sentenced to hang.

The jailer’s daughter’s prayer is heart-rending, as she says, “Alas, / Dissolve, my life! Let not my sense unsettle, / Lest I should drown, or stab, or hang myself” (495, 3.2.28-30). She wishes for a quick, gentle death, not a violent one. The text admirably clues us in to the daughter’s confusion at the scene’s end. She has already wished for death, but (as the Norton editor points out in footnote 6 for pg. 495) when she utters the sentence “all offices are done / Save what I fail in” (495, 3.2.36-37), we can’t be certain whether she refers again to suicide or to completing her mission to find and assist Palamon.

Act 3, Scene 3 (495-97, Arcite keeps his word to Palamon, bringing him sustenance and the all-important files to remove his shackles; he pledges to follow this up by returning with swords and suits of armor for the promised combat.

Once again, there is a strange mix of courtesy and churlishness in a necessary interaction between Palamon and Arcite, with the former, as in Act 3.1, proceeding by way of insulting speech aimed at his cousin, and Arcite at least trying to remain civil in a very uncivil situation. At times, the men’s objectification of Emilia is a bit much to bear, as when Arcite intones, “No mention of this woman; ‘twill disturb us” (495, 3.3.15). Well, there’s another grievous fault we can lay at Emilia’s doorstep!

The two cousins even jest about old sexual conquests back in Thebes. Shame on us for so earnestly believing all that talk about their heroic preservation of moral purity in a corrupt city. Now the idea is to offer a toast “to the wenches / We have known in our days!” (496, 3.3.28-29) Indeed.

Act 3, Scene 4 (497, the jailer’s daughter, now certain that Palamon is dead and that her father will end up on the gallows for the knight’s escape, goes insane and sings suggestive folk songs reminiscent of the ones Ophelia sings in Hamlet.)

The jailer’s daughter is sure that Palamon is now “in heaven” (497, 3.4.4), but she is in a state more like the opposite of that location. In her distraction, the daughter sounds rather like Ophelia in Hamlet, Act 4.2, though her imagery differs at this point in that there are fewer floral references and more tangled references to sinking ships and sailing expeditions, and other such confused, disoriented speech. [27]

Still, the theme of sexual betrayal enters at line 19, with the daughter’s imagining of a trip whose purpose is to bring her to Palamon. She will, she sings, “go seek him through the world that is so wide,” and she’ll do so riding a white horse (497, 3.4.23). The potential condemnation of her father also weighs heavily upon her. There may even be a bit of King Lear in the jailer’s daughter’s ramblings, as when she says, “Would I could find a fine frog—he would tell me / News from all parts o’th’ world …” (497, 3.4.12-13). Such understandings are among Lear’s interests when he goes mad. [28]

Act 3, Scene 5 (497-502, the countrymen and their esteemed schoolmaster assemble for the Morris dance they mean to perform for Theseus and the court; the jailer’s daughter, now completely insane, shows up just in time to replace an absent countrywoman as a dancer; the Morris dance is much appreciated by Theseus and his court.)

The schoolmaster Gerald has his work cut out for him, to hear him tell of his efforts to whip his little acting company of countryfolk into shape for the May Day’s Morris dancing. Whatever is a showrunner to do with such “most coarse-frieze capacities” and “jean judgments”? (497, 3.5.6; Norton footnote 4 for pg. 497 explains that these terms refer to the “coarse fabrics“ that working-class or country people wore.)

Gerald’s plan for the entertainment is simple enough, if rather self-centered. Part of it runs, “the Duke appears; I meet / him, and unto him I utter learned things and many figures; / he hears, and nods, and hums, and then cries ‘Rare!’ and I / go forward” (498, 3.5.10-13). Who knew there were auteur-style directors in ancient Athens? Or should we make that Jacobean England, since the Morris dance is really a medieval specialty, though it has roots in ancient fertility ritual?

There’s one hitch—“Cicely, the sempster’s daughter” (499, 3.5.44) has failed to show, which leads the company to come near condemning all women, or at least (in Gerald’s memorable imagery) comparing them to slippery eels. But just as this problem looms, in dances the jailer’s daughter, and as it turns out, she will do fine. Says the first countryman, “A madwoman? we are made, boys!” (499, 3.5.76)

Schoolmaster Gerald introduces his company to Theseus as “a merry rout, or else a rabble, / Or company, or—by a figure—chorus” (500, 3.5.109-10). The director’s preview of individual actors goes swimmingly, from the split sign that advertises the “Moor – Is” dance and the “Lord of May and Lady bright” on through to the fellow wearing a “Bavian” or baboon suit (501, 3.5.120-37 inclusive). The players’ Morris dance itself is apparently charming enough to win high praise and money from the seated nobility. Gerald is happy. He need not have worried.

Act 3, Scene 6 (502-509, Arcite delivers on his promise to Palamon, bringing swords and armor; he and Palamon suit each other up for the trial; Theseus happens upon the two cousins, arrests them, and sentences them to death; then, moved to pardon them, he declares a competition between Palamon and Arcite along with their respective comrades: the winner will get Emilia, but the loser and his fellow knights will be executed.)

Palamon and Arcite meet again, with the latter delivering on his promises of swords and armor. This time, both men stay within the bounds of courteous speech, though they are no less determined to kill each other over Emilia. Arcite’s tone is representative when he says, “I could wish I had not said I loved her, / Though I had died. But loving such a lady, / And justifying my love, I must not fly from’t” (503, 3.6.40-42). The cousins even exchange fond reminiscences of battle prowess.

Just then, however, in rides the Duke’s hunting party. Arcite wants to hide and delay the quarrel, but Palamon rejects this commonsense plan, saying, “I know your cunning, and I know your cause; / He that faints now, shame take him!” (505, 3.6.120-21) But it’s too late anyhow. Theseus catches sight of both men, and soon condemns them to execution for their disobedient conduct: Arcite for breaking the terms of his banishment, and Palamon for escaping from prison.

It takes some persuasion from the women and Pirithous to change Theseus’s mind, but they finally succeed. Emilia proposes banishment, but Palamon and Arcite reject that offer because it would banish them from her as well. Theseus asks Emilia whether she could approve of putting the choice on her: the man she chooses would be her husband, but the other would die. The hitch in this plan soon appears: asked to choose, Emilia can’t, saying, “I cannot, sir; they are both too excellent; / For me, a hair shall never fall of these men” (509, 3.6.287-88).

Finally, Theseus steps in with a definitive scheme: the two cousins will return in a month’s time, with three picked men each to fight in support of them. The one who can force his opponent to touch the pyramid that Theseus will set up, wins Emilia. The loser and his three supporters must die. Both Palamon and Arcite agree with this plan, and all is set.

ACT 4

Act 4 Synopsis: the jailer’s daughter is of central interest since, though pardoned for Palamon’s escape, she collapses into madness from her extreme disappointment over the knight’s failure to reciprocate her love. A doctor devises a promising cure for her “melancholy,” and it will soon be tested. Meanwhile, Emilia finds that she still can’t choose between Palamon and Arcite, so their struggle, as inflected by Theseus’s showmanship, will go forward. Thus, in Act 4, two different “cures” are about to be tried for the excesses of passion.

Act 4, Scene 1 (509-14, the jailer is informed that the Duke, thanks to Palamon, has pardoned him and his daughter for the knight’s escape, but also that his daughter has gone mad; everyone undertakes to mollify her by supporting her delusions.)

The anxious jailer gets good news from his friends that the people Theseus values most—Hippolyta, Emilia, and Pirithous—have all lent their voices to a pardon for the jailer and his daughter, and even more significantly, that Palamon himself has come clean about what happened and so clinched the pardon for both. Still, there’s a dark cloud hanging over the scene, which is that the daughter has gone mad with distress over Palamon’s betrayal and possible death, and her father’s potential culpability for the escape. Unfortunately, as the wooer attests, she is far gone, so simply hearing the truth is no longer of service to her.

The wooer relates some bits of the daughter’s mad songs, which are moving in their revelation of her anguish. She says she will bring to the Duke “A hundred black-eyed maids that love as I do— / With chaplets on their heads of daffadillies, / With cherry lips, and cheeks of damask roses— / And all we’ll dance an antic fore the Duke / And beg his pardon” (511, 4.1.72-76).

All in all, what the wooer describes by way of the daughter’s songs will remind hearers of Ophelia’s deranged performances in Hamlet Act 4.2, and her gestures among the rushes and flowers that surround her will surely bring us back to Gertrude’s sad, lovely word-painting of Ophelia’s last moments in Act 4.4. [29] The wooer explains that he saved the daughter from drowning, but she got away and had to be tracked down by three or four men. It’s only the romance or tragicomic quality of The Two Noble Kinsmen that preserves the jailer’s daughter from Ophelia’s fate.

The jailer’s daughter is soon brought into the presence of her father and the family’s friends, with disturbing results. She plays up Palamon’s sexual prowess in her bawdy effusions: “All the young maids / Of our town are in love with him …,” she says, adding that “There is at least two hundred now with child by him; / There must be four!” (513, 4.1.125-26, 128-29). The scene ends with the jailer and everyone in the room playing along with the daughter’s deranged references to being the “master of a ship” (513, 4.1.141). As she says, “Come, weigh, my hearts, cheerily!” (513, 4.1.146)

Act 4, Scene 2 (514-18, Emilia, gazing at pictures of Palamon and Arcite, finds that she can’t choose between them; Theseus looks forward to re-greeting the cousins and meeting the three picked men that each will be bringing to the combat.)

Emilia, heartbroken at the coming violence to be done for her love, takes up two small portraits of Palamon and Arcite, and tries once more to make her choice. Of Arcite she says, among other things, “What an eye, / Of what a fiery sparkle and quick sweetness, / Has this young prince!” (514, 4.2.12-14) Of Palamon, at first she speaks less than enthusiastically: “He’s swarth and meager; of an eye as heavy / As if he had lost his mother; a still temper— / No stirring in him, no alacrity; / Of all this [i.e., Arcite’s] sprightly sharpness, not a smile” (514, 4.2.27-30).

In spite of these supposed disadvantages, Emilia almost instantly declares Arcite “a changeling” and “a mere gypsy” to her Palamon (515, 4.2.44). In sum, Emilia just can’t choose permanently between the two cousins, though she recognizes something else. As she says, “I am sotted, / Utterly lost. My virgin’s faith has fled me” (515, 4.2.45-46).

A great deal of descriptive verse follows, as Theseus and Pirithous review the comrades that Palamon and Arcite have brought with them. “They are all the sons of honor,” declares Pirithous, speaking for everyone present (517, 4.2.141). Hippolyta tells Emilia not to weep “till they weep blood,” and Theseus all but blames Emilia’s attractiveness for the battle to come: he says to her, “You have steeled ‘em with your beauty” (517, 4.2.148-49). A fight to the death is imminent.

Act 4, Scene 3 (518-20, a doctor says the jailer’s daughter has come down with “a most thick and profound melancholy”; the cure follows the principle of “like curing like”: the wooer will continue to pay court to the daughter, only this time in the guise of Palamon.)

The jailer speaks with the family doctor, telling him that “She is continually in a harmless distemper; sleeps / little; altogether without appetite, save often drinking; / dreaming of another world and a better …” (518, 4.3.3-5). After dabbling with classical-era pictures of Elysium, the daughter affords both of these observers an almost Dantean vision of Hell in its gruesome particulars: [30] “Alas, ‘tis a sore life they / have i’th’ other place—such burning, frying, boiling, hissing, / howling, chattering, cursing …” says she (518, 4.3.27-29). A considerable amount of that suffering is ascribed to illicit and depraved sexual desire.

By way of diagnosis, the doctor offers this: “How she continues this fancy! ‘Tis not an engraft / madness but a most thick and profound melancholy” (519, 4.3.43-44). To this assumption, he adds something reminiscent of Lady Macbeth’s physician: “I think she has a perturbed mind, which I cannot / minister to” (519, 4.3.54). [31] So far, this is hardly a promising diagnosis.

Then, however, this cautious doctor devises an excellent strategy to cure the jailer’s daughter. [32] The core of it is that her longtime wooer is to come to her, says the doctor, every day in the disguise of Palamon, and be as agreeable and loving towards her as may be. The sum of it is, “It is a falsehood she is in, which is with falsehoods / to be combated” (520, 4.3.84-85). We will await this remedy’s efficacy, but it is certainly a “kinder, gentler” fix than that devised most recently by Theseus to deal with Palamon and Arcite’s absurdly idealistic passion for Emilia.

ACT 5

Act 5 Synopsis: we arrive at the climactic combat between Palamon and Arcite, along with their respective comrades. Arcite prays to Mars, while Palamon prays to Venus, and Emilia prays in part to remain a virgin. The victory goes to Arcite, but his horse rears, falls, and crushes him. Dying, Arcite reconciles with Palamon and apologizes for trying to take Emilia from him. Thus, Palamon ends up “winning” after all, and a wedding will soon take place. We don’t hear much from Emilia regarding this outcome. The jailer’s daughter, cured by her doctor’s and wooer’s efforts, is happily married. Theseus muses that the gods are surely in charge of all human outcomes.

Act 5, Scene 1 (520-24, as the deadly competition nears, Arcite and his comrades pray to the god of war, Mars, to grant them victory in the contest, while Palamon and his comrades pray to the goddess of love, Venus, to grant him Emilia’s love; Emilia herself, along with her female attendants, prays that she may remain a chaste votary of the goddess Diana.)

Theseus suggests that Palamon and Arcite should spend due time on religious ritual to sanctify their bloody course: he says, “Lay by your anger for an hour and, dove-like, / Before the holy altars of your helpers, / The all-feared gods, bow down your stubborn bodies” (520, 5.1.11-13). Let them not, as some ancient heroes did and paid the price, disrespect or disregard the gods and put themselves first. [33]

Both Palamon and Arcite follow Theseus’s strong advice, with Arcite praying to the god of war, Mars, for victory in the contest, and Palamon praying to the goddess of love, Venus, for Emilia’s affections. Arcite says to his men, “You know my prize / Must be dragged out of blood; force and great feat / Must put my garland on, where she sticks / The queen of flowers” (521, 5.1.42-45). [34] The embeddedness of blood and violence with floral imagery in this utterance reminds us of the closeness of love and death throughout this play.

Palamon’s prayers to Venus are also appropriate: “Our argument is love, / Which, if the goddess of it grant, she gives / Victory too” (522, 5.1.70-72). He goes on to suggest by implication that his favored deity, Venus, spreads her power of desire over all human affairs and activities, while Mars’s influence is logically more restricted to the battlefield: “What godlike power / Hast thou not power upon?” Palamon asks Venus rhetorically (522, 5.1.89-90).

Both Palamon and Arcite receive signs from heaven that seem to favor their respective causes, and then it’s Emilia’s turn to pray. She invokes the goddess Diana (Artemis for the Greeks), goddess of the hunt, protector of childbirth, and defender of chastity, among other things. [35] Emilia begins with the beautiful invocation, “O sacred, shadowy, cold, and constant queen; / Abandoner of revels; mute, contemplative …” (523, 5.1.137-38), and goes on to pray that the goddess may grant victory to the contestant who truly loves her best, or else grant that “The file and quality I hold I may / Continue in thy band” (524, 5.1.161-62).

Emilia’s goddess answers her with a single rose, a “symbol of virginity,” [36] blooming on the rose tree that has just sprouted near the altar. But the rose falls, and down comes the rose tree. It seems, then, that Emilia’s last-mentioned prayer will not be granted: she will become a wife. She herself appears to remain somewhat uncertain about the goddess’s intentions: “I shall be gathered— / I think so—but I know not thine own will: Unclasp thy mystery!” (524, 5.1.170-72)

Act 5, Scene 2 (524-28, the doctor is pleased with the improvement in the condition of the jailer’s daughter; he encourages the wooer to continue playing “Palamon,” and even suggests that the wooer should sleep with her in that guise.)

The root of the jailer’s daughter’s madness, or love melancholy, seems to lie in a very strong feeling of possessiveness combined with sexual frustration. The doctor’s remedy appears to be working to lessen the sting of possessiveness since, after all, she now more or less believes that “Palamon” is visiting her to her heart’s content.

The wooer informs the doctor that he has already kissed the daughter twice, and the doctor tells him to “fit her home, / And presently” (525, 5.2.11). As Norton footnote 1 on page 525 suggests, this means a little more—actually a lot more—than “kiss.” The doctor apparently wants the wooer to go ahead and bed the daughter, and he makes this even plainer when he says, “Lie with her if she ask you” (525, 5.2.18). No chivalric reticence is deemed necessary in the treatment of this lower-class girl of (according to her father) 18 years of age. [37] The remedy should be pursued without shame. The jailer objects, but the doctor overrules him.

The rest of the scene suggests that the jailer’s daughter is still not in her right mind, and it’s all that her father, the wooer, and the doctor can do to keep up with her mostly happy delusions about her relationship with Palamon. “We shall have many children,” she says at one point (527, 5.2.93). Still, the doctor is encouraged, and says, “I’ll warrant you, within these three or four days / I’ll make her right again” (527, 5.2.103-04). If that’s what the learned doctor says, who are we, the audience, to disagree?

Act 5, Scene 3 (528-32, Emilia can’t bring herself to watch the tournament; at first, shouts indicate that Palamon has won, but then are heard cries of “Arcite!” and since the latter has in fact emerged victorious, Palamon and his comrades are liable to immediate execution.)

Emilia has no stomach for the death-match that is only moments away, so she remains at some distance from the tournament field, where she can only hearwhat transpires, not see it. When she proves herself unmovable in this decision, the others look to the tournament. All sorts of worries beset Emilia, and after much of the usual praise aimed at the less outwardly impressive Palamon, she exclaims to herself, “Oh, better never born / Than minister to such harm!” (529, 5.3.65-66)

When the initially inaccurate cry of “Palamon!” rings out, Emilia, alone, makes a revealing remark: “Poor servant [Arcite], thou hast lost. / Upon my right side still I wore thy picture, Palamon’s on the left; why so, I know not— / I had no end in’t—else chance would have it so. / On the sinister side the heart lies …” (530, 5.3.72-76). As she goes on to explain, Palamon therefore “Had the best boding chance” (77) to win since the contest is about an affair of the heart. [38] It really sounds as if she favors Palamon, but isn’t sure as to the reason for that election.

Arcite finally wins the contest, forcing Palamon to touch the pyramid with his body. He says gracefully to Emilia, “To buy you I have lost what’s dearest to me, / Save what is bought—and yet I purchase cheaply, / As I do rate your value” (531, 5.3.112-14). The Duke joins their hands together, but Emilia is apparently too distraught to speak any words at all, much less decorous ones. Theseus satisfies any qualms he may have with a speech praising Palamon and an affirmation that the battle was so evenly fought as to preclude easy judgments.

As Theseus and the company prepare to depart, Emilia finally speaks: “Is this winning? / O all you heavenly powers, where is your mercy?” (531, 5.3.138-39) The whole experience leaves her, she says, with little purpose in going on aside from the divinely ordained one of bringing “comfort” to a man who has, in her view, sacrificed a companion worth more, in truth, than she will ever be. Hippolyta shrewdly observes, “Infinite pity, / That four such eyes should be so fixed on one / That two must needs be blind for’t” (532, 5.3.144-46).

Theseus adds his approval to this observation, but it really seems to be the women who most acutely understand and feel the truth of what has happened. It has all been fueled, as Hippolyta’s figure implies, by a fierce triangulation of erotic desire: two men wanting one woman, till death decide the victor. [39]

Act 5, Scene 4 (532-35, as Palamon awaits execution, the news comes that Arcite’s horse has crushed him almost to death; dying, Arcite admits his fault in pursuing Emilia even though Palamon saw and claimed her first; with his final words, Arcite cedes his interest in Emilia to Palamon; at court, Palamon finds out from the jailer that his daughter is doing well and is now married; Theseus decrees a period of mourning, after which all will celebrate the wedding of Palamon and Emilia.)

Palamon speaks with grace as he awaits the executioner’s axe, but it’s perhaps his second knight who offers the best conventional gloss on what is about to happen: “O’er us the victors have / Fortune, whose title is as momentary / As to us death is certain. A grain of honor / They not o’er-weigh us” (532, 5.4.16-19). To men who have always lived by the chivalric honor code, this is no doubt a compelling argument. Everyone knows Lady Fortune is fickle, and the medieval “wheel of fortune” was regularly invoked to deal with the blows that life delivers, or as Hamlet calls them, “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” [40]

We can thank Palamon for helping us to learn how things are going with the jailer’s daughter. He asks the jailer about her, and is informed that “she’s well restored, / And to be married shortly” (532, 5.4.27-28). For once, some unalloyed good news in this play!

But as for Palamon’s supposedly sad fate, that isn’t to be—just as he’s about to be beheaded, news comes that Arcite, while riding a black steed that Emily had gifted to him, has been crushed by the horse as it reared over difficult ground and fell. It’s interesting to note that Arcite, whom Emilia always credited for his “fairness” (a complex quality that Palamon, she has told us repeatedly, partly lacks), is done to death literally by a dark horse.

Arcite’s last speech is mostly spent on bequeathing Emilia to his best friend, Palamon: “Take Emilia, / And with her all the world’s joy. Reach thy hand— / Farewell. I have told my last hour. I was false, / Yet never treacherous. Forgive me, cousin” (534, 5.4.90-93). Thus, and with a kiss for Emilia, dies the noble Arcite. He cedes ground forever to Palamon’s claim a while back that to see and desire a woman first is rightly to claim possession of her. With this apology, the quarrel between the two men is over.

Palamon is cheerless, lamenting, “O cousin, / that we should things desire which do cost us / The loss of our desire! That naught could buy / Dear love but loss of dear love!” (535, 5.4.109-112) This is to suggest that love is a zero-sum game, which is probably a better description of the outcome of this romance or tragicomic play than the usual term ascribed to such plays—“bittersweet”—connotes.

Theseus’s view of the outcome is that Fortune has outdone herself: “The conquered triumphs; / the victor has the loss. Yet in the passage / The gods have been most equal” (535, 5.4.113-15). Palamon saw Emilia first, so he, and not Arcite, will enjoy married life with her. Theseus, one of the greatest Greek heroes, says what he had better say: the gods, not he, are in control of all things, and he will not question their dispensation. He refers to adults as in some sense “children” throughout their lives, and ends with, “Let us be thankful / For that which is, and with you leave dispute / That are above our question” (535, 5.4.134-36).

Well, that’s the Duke’s perspective, and it makes sense, as far as it goes. But how, to consider the matter further, should we construe this ending, indebted as it is to the proximate source of the tale, Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” from The Canterbury Tales? [41] As we have noticed, Theseus, for his notion of the gods’ concern for equity, leans heavily on Palamon’s justification of his sacred right to Emilia’s affection: the prior temporal status of his sighting of Emilia.

It is Palamon’s deep and abiding, but also adolescent, conviction that he owns Emilia’s heart simply because he saw her first. If we are the kind of audience that demands evidence of a fairly impressive Providence at work in a romance play’s successful ending, it’s difficult to ascribe that status to a principle of ocular imperialism that the play itself has mocked, milking it for its comic value when it was first articulated by Palamon in Act 2.2. In truth, the idea seems like no more than standard patriarchal objectification, which isn’t a very bright star to hitch our wagon to.

There is also a sense throughout the play that in so far as Emilia has a favorite, it’s Palamon. Perhaps that’s a providential hint. Still, it’s also impossible to miss the lady’s strong ambivalence about that putative choice. She really can’t decide, and that is probably true for a more complex reason than that she means no harm to either man. Perhaps what we needed for a more satisfactory ending is any indication (as we do find at the end of Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale”) that Emilia herself is satisfied with what has happened. [42]

Act 5, Epilogue (535-36, the Epilogue-speaker says goodbye to the audience, and expresses the wish that they have enjoyed the play.)

The Epilogue-speaker says nothing extraordinary, but is playful with the audience, almost seeming at first to provoke hisses and insults from them. He says, “Pray yet stay awhile / And let me look upon ye” (535, Epilogue 3-4) so that he may contemplate them as a group and individually.

Then, however, the speaker reminds the audience that they have too abiding a connection for any unpleasant expressions of dislike to be appropriate. If the play has been pleasing, well, that was the “end,” and in any case, says the speaker, “ye shall have ere long, / I dare say, many a better, to prolong / Your old loves to us” (536, Epilogue 15-17). That’s poignant since The Two Noble Kinsmen, dating to 1613-14,is widely considered to have been Shakespeare’s last play, though not John Fletcher’s last effort since he lived until 1625.

Edition. Greenblatt, Stephen et al., editors. The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems + Digital Edition. 3rd ed. W. W. Norton, 2016. ISBN-13: 978-0-393-93862-3.

Document Timestamp: 1/5/2026 4:32 PM

ENDNOTES

*To return to exact part of the text referenced by the endnotes below, left-click on the endnote’s numbered link. By contrast, the blue scroll-up button at the bottom right of the page returns to the top of the document.

[1] On Chaucer’s reputation in Shakespeare’s day, see print source Geoffrey Chaucer in Context. Ed. Ian Johnson. Cambridge UP, 2019. Pp. 410-18. Internet sources: “Chaucer, Books, and the Poetic Library.” U of Nebraska-Lincoln Digital Commons; also Shakespeare and Chaucer: Influence and Authority on the Renaissance Stage. Harvard Library “Dash”; also “Chaucer Lost and Found in Shakespeare’s Histories.” Shakespeareoxfordfellowship.org. Brief Chronicles VI (2015). Extensive Chaucer materials are available at Harvard’s Geoffrey Chaucer Website. All accessed 11/28/2025.

[2] The term “fair” is used 38 times in The Two Noble Kinsmen, mostly or entirely in the sense of “light-skinned” (not dark, swarthy, or sun-tanned) and/or “generally decorous and gentle” rather than in some sense ungentle or “base.” On the implications of such whiteness-tending language, see Karim-Cooper, Farah. The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race. Viking, 2023. ISBN-13: 978-0593489383.

[3] As the Sophocles play Antigone has it, Polyneices, a son of Oedipus, is refused burial by King Creon, but the legend of the “Seven against Thebes” and their expedition to defeat Creon is addressed in a number of Greek plays, mainly Euripides’s The Phoenician Women and Aeschylus’s Seven against Thebes. It seems that Creon refused burial collectively to the “Seven” (though not Adrastus, who survived the battle), not only Polyneices. To start with, see the Wikipedia entry, “Seven against Thebes.” Accessed 11/29/2025.

[4] See Greek Legends and Myths: Capaneus. Accessed 11/27/2025.

[5] The opposition between wedding and funeral is reminiscent of the same contrast in Sophocles’s brilliant tragedy Antigone. Trans. Francis Storr. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/29/2025.

[6] De Charny, Geoffroi. A Knight’s Own Book of Chivalry. Ed. Elspeth Kennedy, et al. U of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. ISBN-13: 978-0812219098. The play’s temporality is split between ancient and medieval times. The medieval chivalric code in love and war amounts to a containment strategy over against primal instincts and impulses towards selfishness and violence, lest they break out in their purest form, and civilization lose the protective shield of certain codes that constrain kings, warriors, and lovers from behaving in chaotic, unsustainable ways. Online, see “Code of Chivalry.” Medieval Life & Times. Accessed 11/30/2025.

[7] Consider Machiavelli’s characterization of the ruler’s ethical dilemma: to quote from Chapter XV of The Prince, “a man who wishes to act entirely up to his professions of virtue soon meets with what destroys him among so much that is evil.” Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/28/2025. The point is that one can’t be too good in a society that isn’t good.

[8] Juno bore a grudge against Thebes because Jupiter pursued the Theban princess Semele, mother of Dionysus. She is also said to have sent the destroying Sphinx to Thebes. Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3. 52. Theoi.com. Accessed 11/28/2025.

[9] War has sometimes been cast as a purifying event, helping a society to deal with its own excesses and corruptions, overpopulation problems, social unrest, etc. Soldiers weren’t treated well after the battle came and went, even in Shakespeare’s time, so this might as well be a contemporaneous complaint. For example, Queen Elizabeth I balked at paying the sailors who helped defeat the Spanish Armada in 1588. See “The Spanish Armada” at HistoricUK.com. Accessed 11/28/2025.

[10] See Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida. Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 812-89. See 824, 1.3.108-09.

[11] With regard to the importance of amicitia perfecta among the Greeks and Romans, see Shakespeare’s Globe April 6, 2018 essay “Shakespeare and Friendship.” Accessed 11/28/2025. See also Cicero’s fine treatise De Amicitia, or “On Friendship,” and Seneca’s Letters, which deal with the concept of friendship insightfully. See especially Letter IX.

[12] See Paradise Lost, Book 4.467-69. The John Milton Reading Room. Accessed 11/28/2025.

[13] Frye, Northrop. Fools of Time: Studies in Shakespearean Tragedy. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1967, repr. 1985. Pg. 3.

[14] Goneril says, “O, the difference of man and man! / To thee a woman’s services are due; / My fool usurps my body.” Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. See 816, 4.2.25-28.

[15] Tennyson, Lord Alfred. “Ulysses.” The Poetry Foundation. Accessed 11/28/2025.

[16] Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. In The Norton Shakespeare: Comedies, 3rd ed. 673-731. See 686, 2.1.12-14.

[17] Donne, John. “The Canonization.” Poetry Foundation. Accessed 11/28/2025.

[18] With regard to the representation of love and sexual desire from classical times to Shakespeare’s, a good place to start is Ovid’s Ars Amatoria, or, The Art of Love. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/30/2025.

[19] See Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Johns Hopkins UP, 1979. ISBN-13: 978-0801822186. Online, see Bernard Keenan’s essay, “Mimetic Desire & the Scapegoat: Notes on the Thought of René Girard.” 4 Sept. 2023. Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political. Accessed 11/29/2025.

[20] An interesting article on the garden in The Two Noble Kinsmen is “Two Noble Kinsmen Cutting Garden.” Martha Woofter’s blog. Accessed 11/28/2025. There’s a great deal of floral imagery and terminology in the present play, much of it no doubt signifying (in context) qualities such as hope, expectation, ephemerality, passion, a maiden’s blush, nature’s cycles of life, death, and rebirth, and so forth. The play is, after all, partly about the effects of the “flowering” of erotic passion on human life.

[21] On the history and lore of May Day celebrations in England, see “May Day in Tudor England.” English Renaissance History Podcast (YouTube). Englandcast.com See also “May Day Celebrations.” Historic-UK.com. Accessed 11/29/2025. On the Morris dances that go along with such festivals, see, for example, “Morris Dancing—only in England” (YouTube/Britclip) and Britannica.com’s entry “Morris Dance.” All accessed 11/29/2025.

[22] Shakespeare, William. The Play of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. In The Norton Shakespeare: Romances and Poems, 3rd ed. 150-206. See Act 2.

[23] These codes offer a certain “structure” to stormy, otherwise chaotic passions and events; they provide direction and some measure of containment of such dangerous elements.

[24] Fine examples of this “guest-host” dynamic may be found in Homer. See The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles. Penguin Books, 1997. ISBN-13: 978-0140268867. See, for example, Book 7, wherein Odysseus visits the hall of the Phaeacian king, Alcinous. Online, see The Odyssey. Gutenberg e-text, Samuel Butler translation. 11/29/2025.

[25] As in the unforgettable “Black Knight” skit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

[26] In England and other parts of today’s United Kingdom, wolves were for centuries much feared and subject to attempts to exterminate them. Those attempts go back at least as far as King Edward I (r. 1272-1307). To this day, there are no wild wolves in the UK. See “Are There Wild Wolves in the UK?” YouTube. Naturally Happy Dogs. Accessed 11/30/2025.

[27] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 4.2.

[28] Shakespeare, William. King Lear. Folio with additions from the Quarto. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 764-840. Lear, captured and at last with Cordelia again, makes an intelligencer’s promise to “take upon ’s the mystery of things, / As if we were God’s spies.” 832, 5.3.16-17; see 8-19 inclusive.

[29] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 430, 4.4.165-82.

[30] The general view among Shakespearean scholars seems to be that Shakespeare didn’t read Dante’s work because his Italian wasn’t fluent enough, but not everyone agrees. In particular, see Vivienne Robertson’s Images in an Antique Book: Dante in Shakespeare. Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2019. But there were other images of the afterlife available to Shakespeare, from his youth onward. See “Heaven and Hell through Shakespeare’s Eyes.” The Shakespearean Student, 4/12/2024. Accessed 11/30/2025.

[31] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. 917-69. When Macbeth asks the doctor of physic, “Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased …?” the doctor answers, “Therein the patient / Must minister to himself” (963, 5.3.40, 45). On the general topic of melancholy, the go-to text for scholars is Burton, Robert. Anatomy of Melancholy. 1621. Gutenberg e-text. Accessed 11/30/2025. But see also Bright’s 1586 Treatise of Melancholie. HathiTrust. Accessed 11/30/2025.

[32] The doctor’s remedy of curing delusion with delusion seems almost homeopathic. Medieval and early-modern medicine included a plethora of herbal remedies, which, of course, should not be facilely conflated with homeopathy. See William Parr’s Fall 2018 entry, “Medicine, Magic, and Herbalism in Shakespeare’s England” in the Shakespeare Comes Alive! blog. See also Elizabethan-Era.org’s entry “Elizabethan Medicine and Illnesses” and the Folger Shakespeare and Beyond blog’s essay by Esther French, 5-31-2016, “The Elizabethan Garden: 11 plants Shakespeare would have known well.” All accessed 11/30/2025.

[33] There are many ancient heroes in this category, of course, but let one stand in for all: the lesser Ajax, son of Oileus the king of Locris, was shipwrecked while departing from Troy after the Greeks’ victory there. Ajax survived the storm, but when he boasted to the gods, Poseidon became enraged and drowned him for his hubris. See Britannica.com’s entry “Ajax the Lesser.” Accessed 11/30/2025.

[34] The Norton editor’s note here is useful: the “queen of flowers” is Emilia herself, who resides in Arcite’s “head” (or mind), where of course the victor’s laurel crown will go, if he wins.

[35] Diana, or, as the Greeks called her, Artemis, had quite a portfolio of functions. See Theoi.com’s entry “Artemis.” Accessed 11/30/2025.

[36] Per the Norton gloss for this reference, “rose.”

[37] At 2.4.6-7 of the present play, the jailer’s daughter exclaims, “What pushes are we wenches driven to / When fifteen once has found us?” Of course, this need not imply that she is presently fifteen—she may instead be referring to the increase in desire that comes with puberty.

[38] See Norton footnote 1 for pg. 530 on this placement’s implications.

[39] As above, see Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Johns Hopkins UP, 1979. ISBN-13: 978-0801822186. Online, see Bernard Keenan’s essay, “Mimetic Desire & the Scapegoat: Notes on the Thought of René Girard.” 4 Sept. 2023. Critical Legal Thinking: Law and the Political. Accessed 11/29/2025.

[40] Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Second Quarto with additions from the Folio. In The Norton Shakespeare: Tragedies, 3rd ed. Combined text 358-447. See 396, 3.1.57. For an image of the famous wheel, see Fortune’s Wheel (von Landsperg, Wikimedia) and Fortune’s Wheel (British Library, Wikimedia).

[41] See, for example, Dieter Mehl’s essay “A Modern Perspective: The Two Noble Kinsmen.” Folger Shakespeare Library blog. Accessed 11/30/2025.

[42] As Dieter Mehl, ibid, writes, Emilia “never explicitly swerves from her conviction that virginity is preferable to conventional marriage.” In Chaucer’s text, while Emelye is not exactly credited with the autonomy to refuse Palamon—Theseus decides at the tale’s end that it’s time, after a long delay, for Palamon and Emelye to marry)—it is said that “Emelye hym loveth so tendrely, / And he hire serveth so gentilly, / That nevere was ther no word hem bitwene / Of jalousie or any oother teene” (66, 312-15). The Riverside Chaucer, 3^rd edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Commentaries onShakespeare’s Romance Plays

ACT 1

ACT 2

ACT 3

ACT 4

ACT 5

ENDNOTES

Commentaries on
Shakespeare’s Romance Plays