This is one of the apocryphal plays, although the Stationers’ Register notes joint authorship: Shakespeare and John Fletcher. “There is no good reason to doubt this ascription: many plays of the time did not appear in print until long after they were written,” says Stanley Wells (381), blind to the irony about the idiotic Stratfordian dating of Shakespeare plays. Three plays are now considered Shakespeare/Fletcher joint projects: this one, the lost Cardenio, and Henry VIII — only this last included in the First Folio perhaps to round out the Histories sequence. Brian Vickers carves the play up with Shakespeare given credit for I.i-iv, II.i, III.i-ii, IV.iii, V.i, iii-iv (Gilvary 448).
Like Pericles, this play became semi-canonical later on, published first in a 1634 quarto edition. “It is related in style and content to Shakespeare’s romances and to tragicomedies written by Fletcher with Francis Beaumont” (Wells 382) — presumably meaning that it contains “little action and minimal character portrayal” (Bloom 694). It dramatizes Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale: the rivalry between Palamon and Arcite for Emilia. Therefore, Boccaccio’s Teseida lurks in the distant background.
Earlier in Elizabeth’s reign, Richard Edwards — whose connection with Oxford at least extends to them both having poems in the 1576 collection Paradise of Dainty Devices (Gilvary 450) — was credited with a play titled Palamon and Arcite, presented before the Queen at the Oxford University graduation ceremonies.
The 16-year-old Edward de Vere participated in these same ceremonies, receiving his degree shortly afterward. Oxfordian researcher Katherine Chiljan made a plausible case that de Vere himself may have been involved in the production of Palamon and Arcite. “The close proximity of de Vere to this acknowledged precursor for Two Noble Kinsmen suggests that John Fletcher may have revised and updated an old piece of Shakespearean juvenilia, or perhaps a surviving torso of an update that de Vere attempted late in life.” (Farina 55, Chiljan 64)
Some descriptions of The Two Noble Kinsmen and the “surviving excerpts of Palamon and Arcite strongly resemble de Vere’s early poetry…. The prologue … suggests it was the author’s first dramatic work (‘new plays and maidenheads are near akin’)” (Anderson 33). Another play titled Palmon and Arcite enjoyed four performances at the Rose Theater in 1594, perhaps being a revised version of the 1566 play (Chiljan 64).
“The play is deeply concerned with friendship, with love, with tensions resulting from the conflicting demands of friendship and love, and with marriage” (Wells 385). An additional component, the Jailor’s daughter’s infatuation with Palamon and going mad, is original. Otherwise the play is laborious — heavy with rhetoric and formal masque-like pageantry and spectacle (Asimov, I 55) that don’t seem very Shakespearean, at least not mature Shakespeare.
The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act by Act
The Two Noble Kinsmen Introduction
Further Resources
Filmography
The Two Noble Kinsmen.
The Two Noble Kinsmen. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, 2014. Entire play here.
The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Best Editions
Bevington, David, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. 6th ed. Pearson Education Inc., 2009. 1604-1652.
Potter, Lois, ed. The Two Noble Kinsmen. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Oxfordian Resources
Chiljan, Katherine. “Oxford and Palamon and Arcite: Could this 1566 play actually be an early work by Edward de Vere?” Shakespeare Oxford Newsletter 35.1 (Spring 1999): 10-13.
Gilvary, Kevin. “The Tempest.” In Dating Shakespeare’s Plays. Ed. Kevin Gilvary. Tunbridge Wells, UK: Parapress, 2010. 445-454.
Ogburn, Charlton. The Mysterious William Shakespeare: The Myth & The Reality. 2nd ed. McLean, VA: EPM Publications, Inc., 1992.
And Other General Resources
Potter, Lois. Introduction. The Two Noble Kinsmen. The Arden Shakespeare, Third Series. London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Shakespeare Authorship Organizations
The Shakespeare Foundation. Dir. Alan W. Green. The sponsor of Shakespeare Illuminated. You say you want a revolution. Well….
The Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship. Browse, get hooked, become a member. Tell them I sent you.
The De Vere Society. Our Oxfordian friends and collaborators across the pond.
The Shakespeare Authorship Roundtable. We consider all possible authors behind the “Shakespeare” name.