Noble in their love: Two Noble Kinsmen
| Chief Characters
* Theseus- The Duke of Athens,
married to Hippolyta.
* Hippolyta - The most dreaded
Amazonian and sister to Emilia.
* Emilia - Cannot make up her
mind between Arcite and Palamon. She does not catch our
imagination until one dies.
* Palamon - Melancholy all the
time. In love with Emilia. Cousin to Arcite
* Arcite - Cousin to Palamon
and along with Palamon, nephews to Creone.
* The Goaler’s daughter - In
love with Palamon.
* The three Queens - Their
first-Act appeal to Theseus is profoundly dignified and touching
if not moving. Later, the Thrid Queen speaks the couplet,
transmitted from Chaucer: ‘This world’s a city full of straying
streets. And death’s the market place where each one meets’.
|
Written in 1613-14. The Two Noble Kinsmen is a romance derived from
Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale and a Shakespeare-Fletcher partnership. Though
the play did not get into the Folio of 1623. It is usually allowed the
whole of Act I, the first scene of Act III and the whole of Act V,
except the second scene. The unloved subplot of the goaler’s daughter is
allowed to Fletcher. However, how much each dramatist edited the other,
none can speculate.
|
Beautiful Emilia who cannot make up her mind between Palamon and
Arcite |
In the incidental pageantry taste is mirrored in the Jacobean
theatre. Not one of Shakespeare’s favourite plays for the state The two
Noble Kinsmen is seldom performed. The few revivals have strengthened
the belief in its theatrical power and the consistent quality of verse.
Not great in dialogue nor in the overall plot.
Under a different title, The revival in 1664, Davenant adapted the
play, removing the goaler’s daughter. The play was ignored until 1928
when Andrew Leight put on the true text at the Old Vic with Ernest
Milton and Eric Portman as Palamon and Arcite and Jean Forbes Robertson
as the golaer’s daughter. Richard Digby Day adapted the text as an
imaginatively simple Open Air Theatre revival in Regent’s Park in 1974.
George Murphy and Hugh Quarshie was the noble kinsmen for the Royal
Shakespeare Company in 1986.
Synopsis of the play
Sited in Athens. Thibes which is a country near Athens. The Two noble
kinsmen, is a mixture in comedy and faked-history. The three mourning
queens urge Theseus, the Duke of Athens to attack and kill Creone at the
celebration of his marriage to Hippolyta, a dreaded Amazonian. Creone
was the King of Thebes who slew their husbands and for that reason
Theseus agrees. Creone’s two nephews, Palamon and Arcite who are the two
noblemen, flight for Thebes but Theseus captures and imprisons them.
From the window of the prison, they see Emilia who is a sister of
Hippolyta and they both fall in love with her;
Arcite is released and banished from Athens. Disguised, he joins
Emilia’s service. In the meantime, the goalkeeper’s daughter is
passionately infatuated with Palamon and enables him to escape and later
goes mad for his loss. The two kinsmen meet and fight with each other,
sparring them on the intercession of Emilia who is not sure whom she
loves between the two. Theseus orders them to return in a month’s time
and fight again. He says that the winner of the bout will have Emilia
and the loser will be exceucted. To restore the sanity of the goaler’s
daughter, a wooer is advised to impersonate Palamon.
As the month ends, Arcite prays to mars and Palamon to Venus for
success while Emilia prays at the altar of Diana. Arcite wins the combat
but later falling from his horse, is mortally wounded. While breathing
his last breath, he hands over Emilia to Palamon who in the meantime, is
saved from execution. |
