Dusty:

I have never read The Two Noble Kinsmen before — when I was studying Shakespeare in college and graduate school it was not regarded as part of the canon, and when I taught Shakespeare I had students read only “major” canonical plays, but the play is included in my 1974 Riverside Shakespeare (although not in my 2002 Complete Pelican Shakespeare). I gather that the play is now widely thought to be the result of a collaboration between Shakespeare and Fletcher, with most of Act 1 assigned to Shakespeare.

There seems to be agreement among editors that although the play was not printed until 1634, it was written and probably performed about 1613, at a time when Shakespeare was writing the late “romances.” My editor (Hallett Smith) compares the play to Pericles, based on Gower as 2NK is based on Chaucer. Perhaps Shakespeare and Fletcher adopted the title not only because Palamon and Arcite are indeed cousins and are notably “noble,” but also to distinguish it from the lost 1566 play called Palamon and Arcite. The prologue is usually assigned to Fletcher, and in fact it does not sound like Shakespeare, not only because it is in rhymed couplets.

I have not read Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale in a long time, but a quick check tells me that most of what is in the play’s first act — the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, the Three Queens — is an addition to Chaucer. And Shakespeare seems to feel the need not only to provide a little back story — why P and A are  fighting for the wicked Creon — but also to position their central love story in the context of a royal marriage and three royal funerals.

I tried to keep an eye out for Shakespeare’s manner of writing and plotting. One thing I noticed is that the text has a number of neologisms: boudge, thirds (as a verb), operance, blood-siz’d, visitating, wrinching. Shakespeare apparently kept inventing new words even at the end of his career. But the characters are pretty “flat,” and do not seem like the mixed and developed characters in the earlier plays. Maybe Shakespeare is continuing to experiment with dramatic form, not only mixing tragedy and comedy but also playing with elements of masque and ceremony.

1.1 is taken up with a stage spectacle, the marriage procession of Theseus and Hippolyta, and then the dramatic and shocking interruption of the procession by the entrance of Three Queens dressed in mourning. (Is Shakespeare thinking of Hamlet, which opens with a royal marriage that is disturbed by a wedding guest who is still dressed in funereal mourning?) This provides more stage spectacle and takes up some time. The fact that are three queens rather than just one gives the scene the quality of folklore, and also provides for more speechifying. Each of the queens delivers a stately address, seeking to persuade Theseus to help her bury her husband. (The Elizabethan audience perhaps admired  the formal rhetoric.) Apart from this interruption, there is not much “drama” in the scene, not much conflict. Theseus is easily persuaded, though he is at first reluctant to postpone his wedding. Emilia, who will prove to be central to the love plot, is only a minor character here, but her sister hints that she will soon give over her celibacy and take a husband.

1.2 introduces Palamon and Arcite, the two cousins, who are in full agreement with each other — again, no conflict — that they ought to flee the wicked city of Thebes, until news arrives that Thebes is being invaded by Theseus, and suddenly they feel obliged to fight for their city (not for Creon).

1.3 shows that Theseus and his chief general, Pirithous (also a close friend) constitute another “noble” pair (though not kinsmen). Emilia and her sister Hippolyta are kinswomen and noble, and  Hippolyta, about to be married, doubts Emilia’s preference to remain unmarried. Emilia says her “true love” was Flavinia, who died when the two maids were only eleven: that’s yet another “noble” pair.

1.4 is a battle scene, in which Theseus defeats the Thebans. The Three Queens enter the battlefield, acting like Glinda the Good Witch, promising good things for Theseus. Was Shakespeare thinking of his own three witches in Macbeth? They exit, and then Palamon and Arcite are borne in on “hearses” (biers), as if dead. (We never see Creon.) The fact that the exit and the entrance do not overlap gives the scene a ceremonial rather than a dramatic quality. The 2NK never speak, and maybe don’t even raise their heads. Theseus, who has just rewarded the Three Queens, now displays more nobility by ordering the best medical care for the wounded cousins, presumably because they are noble and fought bravely.

1.5 has little text, but the funeral procession presumably takes some stage time, as does the lovely song (which recalls the funeral song in Cymbeline). The Three Queens each pronounce words over the graves. Their words feel less like dialogue among three grieving women than independent blessings (recalling the blessings that each Queen gave to Theseus in 1.4). The fact that they exit “severally” sustains the sense that they are masque-like figures rather than dramatic characters.

Michael:

I thought I had read Two Noble Kinsmen, but it was some time ago and seems new to me now. And I’ve never taught it. I’m reading it in my Norton Shakespeare (1997) and seeing that it’s been included, as you note, in the Riverside as well as the Signet back as far as the mid-60s;so it’s now canonical, even with Fletcher’s collaboration. Walter Cohen, who edits it for the Norton, suggests Shakespeare wrote most of the first and last acts. The style of act 1 seems very much late Shakespeare — sometimes unmistakably so, with metaphoric language that at times is almost strained. Beyond the neologisms you point to, I note nouns that have been turned to verbs (“chapel,” meaning entomb, “convent,” “friend”) or participles (“cabined” and “skiffed,”) and what appears the frequent elision of relative pronouns.

The three queens would appear to encompass the gang of aristocratic women who accost Theseus in Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale; there too he allows the wedding to wait until he’s settled their score with Creon, whom he kills in battle. But it is more elaborated than in the Knight’s Tale, where it seems almost an afterthought. As in Chaucer, Palamon and Arcite are pretty much indistinguishable, and their fast friendship as cousins quickly turns to enmity as soon as Emilia appears.

Agreed the prologue doesn’t sound like Sh. The ceremonious dialogue with the three queens, Theseus, Hyppolita, and Emilia does seem masque-like.

Hyppolita’s memory of Flavina is striking; it made me think of the recollections of Helena and Hermia’s girlhood, but now, with Flavina’s death, in a minor key. Here it seems to introduce the idea of inviolate maidenhood, which will define Emilia.

The Third Queen’s final lines of the act struck me — an almost metaphysical image: “This world’s a city full of straying streets, And death’s the market-place where each one meets.” I too was momentarily reminded of the song in Cymbeline by what’s sung for the queens.

Michael:

Act 2 introduces the jailer and his daughter. The interesting thing about the daughter is that she’s frankly in love with Palamon and willingly sexual about her love, in contrast to Emilia, who will need to be pushed into marriage. The jailer group are not named, just “jailer’s daughter,” brother, wooer, friends, as if they’re too common for names.

In 2.2 the hint of homoeroticism between the two cousins, or maybe more than a hint, comes in Arcite’s devotion to Palamon, esp. his suggestion that they are “one another’s wife,” but it may mean simply that they are so devoted to one another that they are almost identical. But their mutual love initially defines their satisfaction with their prison. Does this happiness with imprisonment seem almost comic? It leads immediately to Emilia’s picking of a narcissus, and her suggestion that the Narcissus of the legend was a fool to love himself and her remark to her woman that “Men are mad things.” This is instantly confirmed in the undoing of the exaggerated love of the two young men for each other as they both see Emilia and fall in love with her, equally, it seems. And this too seems comic. Of course –and also comic? — is the fact that one expresses his love as heavenly, as for a goddess, and the other as earthly, for a woman. This came from Chaucer, but here seems downplayed. When the jailer brings word that Arcite has been released at Pirithous’ request, Palamon says if he were released, he would do such deeds that Emilia would take “manhood” on her and ravish him! Comic? When the jailer says he must move Palamon to another part of the prison, away from the sight of Emilia, and will clap irons on him if he won’t go, Palamon says he’ll shake them like a morris dancer. The playwright, here — Fletcher? – seems to be drawing out what were the potentially comic elements of Chaucer’s tale. This continues in 2.3 as Arcite laments what he thinks is Palamon’s advantage in seeing Emilia and possibly speaking to her. But he’ll disguise himself — a false beard and mustache? — so he can return to Athens. The language of the four countrymen advances the possibility of comedy: one’s wife may be “as jealous as a turkey,” another will leave the plow today, but “tickle out” the jades’ tails tomorrow. And the schoolmaster will “eat a hornbook” if he fails to keep his promise (dance too? or disappoint he tanner’s daughter?). All the jokeyness among them contrasts nicely with the aristocratic exaggeration of the two lovers. But now Arcite is going to slip in among them and compete in the country game.

2.4 has the Jailer’s Daughter enlisted in the plot; her love for Palamon, which she elaborates frankly and charmingly, will cause her to set Palamon free. Though she admits her baseness, we might think her a preferable match for old Palamon.

Though Arcite has proved himself in wrestling and running, the court dialogue has him fill out his aristocratic accomplishments. It concludes with Emilia telling Theseus that she would be too wise to allow Arcite to become her master. As in Chaucer she maintains her allegiance with Diana.

2.6 has the Jailer’s daughter tell of her freeing of Palamon to the very wood where Arcite and the others are gathering for May rites. But she also elaborates on her love for him and her hope that he will recognize her love and respond (“use me, so he shall”).

Dusty:

I also have the old 1966 Signet edition, in which Clifford Leech regards the play as the result of a collaboration.

I agree with your “comic” reading of Act 2, but it does not seem like Shakespearean comedy. The Jailer and his daughter are not Shakespearean peasants or even middling commoners: they both speak rather formally, even pretentiously. As for the two noble kinsmen, they do seem slightly laughable and self-deluded in their determination to be completely contented with spending their lives in prison. (Did Fletcher remember Lear and Cordelia resolving to “tell old tales” in prison?) Palamon and Arcite are so sure that they will enjoy their lives that they are clearly being set up for a “fall.” They both have long leisurely speeches, rather inappropriate, one would think, for prisoners.

And indeed they fall in love with Emilia at first sight, so completely that we seem to be in a folktale, not a sophisticated stage comedy.

I’m not sure it’s homoeroticism that they display so much as narcissism — you make a good point there. (Is that a mini-flower dialogue about narcissus and roses?) In some ways Palamon and Arcite are the same person: Arcite even says that “You have told me that I was Palemon and you were Arcite.” The Jailer mistakes them, and the daughter replies that the (only) way you tell them apart is that one is shorter than the other. (Do we remember Rosencrantz and Guildenstern . . . Guildenstern and Rosencrantz?)

More comedy when they quickly fall out so vehemently with each other, their language now changing from long speeches to rapid-fire exchanges.

And still more in 2.2 when Arcite, banished, is actually jealous of Palemon, who gets to remain in prison where he can feast his eyes on Emilia.  Maybe not comedy so much as folktale: we can’t take this as serious psychology. The scene with the rehearsing morris dancers goes on longer than it needs to for plot purposes — which is simply to make Arcite think of a disguise. These countrymen presumably speak in stage “Mummerset” accents, which as you say contrasts sharply with the language of the other characters.

In 2.3 and 2.5 we get soliloquies from the jailer’s daughter. She is indeed a foil to Emilia, quite ready to love Palemon. But there’s a kind of “country” innocence about her. (I thought of Margery in Wycherley’s “The Country Wife.”) She’s naive and not slutty, but eager for bodily love.

Meanwhile, in 2.4 Emilia is modest and demure in the presence of Arcite, even when he is offered to her as her servant (with obvious hints that he would make a good husband). Again, this seemed more like folktale than like drama.

Dusty:

Act 3 is quite long — six scenes — all of which take place in “the country,” where we meet several of the characters separately and in a final scene meet most of them together.

In 3.1 Arcite, disguised and illegally still avoiding banishment, is alone in the country on May morning, where he meets Palemon, who has been led, still shackled, into the country by the jailer’s daughter, who plans to return for him later with a file. Arcite is warm and friendly toward his cousin but Palamon is still hostile. It’s not clear to me why this is so, but it provides opportunities for comedy, and permits Shakespeare to defer their open conflict for several more scenes. I say “Shakespeare” because this scene is usually attributed to him, and it’s perhaps easy to see why: the language is more “difficult,” knottier and more metaphorical, less fluid than Fletcher’s.

In 3.2 the jailer’s daughter is wandering about, unable to find Palamon (who has apparently wandered off from where she left him). She gets a soliloquy, which tends to give her role prominence.

In 3.3, Palamon, provided food and drink by Arcite, now begins to loosen up — there are opportunities for comedy here, and hints that the hostility between the cousins was baseless and ridiculous. Palamon introduces some “bro” talk about “the wenches/ We have known in our days” but it’s shown to be forced and he breaks it off, his hostility returning.

In 3.4 we switch back to the jailer’s daughter, who laments her loss of Palamon and assumes the worst for herself and her father. In her emotional distress, she seems to become distracted, and is on the way to some kind of “madness.” (Why this healthy and hearty young woman should fall into madness is not clear to me.) I think the scene remain comic: we have not yet strayed into tragi-comedy.

3.5 brings back the morris dancers and their director, the schoolmaster. They are  rehearsing for a performance before the Duke. (Shades of “Midsummer Night’s Dream.”) Again I presume that the dancers speak in strong country accents; the schoolmaster, something of a pedant, pompously drops Latin tags. It’s an interlude of simple rural mirth that does not advance the plot in any way. Into the scene comes the jailer’s daughter who is now clearly deranged, and singing, like Ophelia.

3.6 is the longest scene in the play so far, more than 300 lines, and proves to be something of a climax to the action so far. Although it goes on rather long, and might be difficult to carry off on the stage, I thought it a delightful and nearly absurd send-up of the knightly code of honor in which noble gentlemen fall out over a “noble difference” and, while treating each other with utmost courtesy, prepare for mortal combat with each other. (Arcite seems here to revert to his former hostile self, though presumably an actor could make clear that he still feels warmly toward his cousin.) That the difference between them is not some vile insult but a juvenile dispute about “who saw her first” makes it sublimely silly. The combat is interrupted by Theseus, who commands them to stop. A and P immediately and honorably reveal themselves and ask permission to continue. Theseus refuses, and condemns them to death. This leads to the next stage of the comedy, as Hippolyta and Emilia intercede, pleading on behalf of the cousins and asking that the penalty be reduced to banishment. Theseus refuses and dismisses the idea of banishment as a woman’s idea: doesn’t she realize that the banished cousins will  find a way to fight and kill each other? I think the audience, focused on the way in which the characters overperform their roles (insisting on their honor, pleading for mercy), doesn’t worry for a minute about anybody dying. Emilia then asks again for banishment, on condition that the cousins swear not to fight or think about her. They of course refuse to take such an oath. Theseus settles it, for the moment, by telling the cousins they must return within a month (why not now?) for formal combat, with rules and spectators, and telling Emilia that she must marry the winner.

Michael:

Another example of Sh (presumably) turning a noun to a verb in Arcite’s soliloquy: he speculates what passion Palamon would feel if he knew Arcite “eared” Emilia’s language. Not clear to me either why Palamon is so hostile. The language does sound more “late Shakespeare.”

Does the authorship continue? The jailer’s daughter would not reck if the wolves would “jaw” her if Palamon had the file.

The bro talk in 3.3 jangles; Palamon eventually says, “away with this strained mirth” before they quarrel again. This seems wide of their usual “high” language and may suggest some comedy. It’s hard, after all, to keep up that other talk.

The turn in the Jailer’s Daughter is hard to understand. If comic, and it seems intended that way, it is hard to see why madness should emerge.

I’d recommend dropping 3.5 from future productions. It really is pointless. I think it may be meant as rural mirth, maybe like the scene in Act 4 of Winter’s Tale, and to fill out and lighten the play, but in WT the scene was well integrated into the plot and themes of the play, and here it just seems to provide an opportunity for the Jailer’s daughter’s madness, which also seems hard to fathom. Hyppolita and Emilia enjoy the morris dancing at least.

Lots of chat about armor and weapons in 3.6, which may contribute to the comic sense of aristocratic high-mindedness between the two noble kinsmen who want to kill each other. The fight itself is an on-and-off thing, what with Theseus and the gang breaking in. Palamon tells him why he and Arcite are guilty and should be punished. It gets quite crazy when Palamon concludes that if Theseus would allow them to continue fighting, he’ll kill Arcite to fulfill justice, then Theseus can kill him. Then the two argue over who should die first before the women plead for mercy, Emilia says it’s mainly their own fault, “The misadventure of their own eyes kill ’em,” but she’ll pity them because that’s what women do. Eventually she suggests Theseus banish them both, which would get her off the hook. But the hitch here is that the cousins will continue to fight, and neither will agree. Theseus recognizes the impasse. Well, let Emilia choose one or the other. But she can’t; they’re both “too excellent.” So the solution is the tournament in a month’s time, which will have them bringing three knightly friends to fight it out. So the two cousins can be friends again until the tournament.

Michael

Act 4 brings back the Jailer to talk about his missing daughter. The Wooer also returns and describes her madness. Like Desdemona, in the Wooer’s account, she sings the Willow song and like Ophelia she falls into the water. The Wooer rescues her from the water, but, he says, she slips away, then comes in with the Jailer’s brother. She believes Palamon has made 200 women pregnant, and the rest of her dialogue seems pure madness.

In 4.2 Emilia first celebrates the beauty of Arcite in elaborate terms and dispraises Palamon. But then she turns and celebrates Palamon. The two have returned with their companions for the tournament, and like Emilia the messenger and Pirithous praise the features of each. We seem back in the scene where Emilia praised both cousins, unable to choose either. So in spite of the elaborate preparations, we seem back where we began, at an impasse.

With 4.3 we have more madness accounts, then the Jailer’s daughter herself enters to display her madness. Everyone is persuaded that her love for Palamon has driven her mad. The father believes she can be cured with “falsehoods” of her friends sort of overdosing her with Palamon suggestions.

Dusty:

Here are more neologisms, a couple of them one part of speech made out of another: deafing (5.3.8), titlers (5.3.87), armipotent (5.1.54), unwappered (5.4.10).

Act 4 seems to take place on the day of the tournament, i.e., a month after the end of Act 3. (Or maybe the gap of a month is between 4.1 and 4.2).  Some of the difficulties in the play have been ironed out:  Palamon and Arcite are pardoned, as are the Jailer and his daughter. But the daughter is still mad, and we get another “mad scene,” with details borrowed, as you note, from Hamlet and Othello. In 4.2 Emilia cannot decide whether she prefers Palamon or Arcite, and she finds the supporting knights to be equally handsome. What are we to make of her indecisiveness? Is Shakespeare reexamining the old “love at first sight” idea?  In 4.3 the doctor plans to cure the Jailer’s daughter by sending in a fake Palamon. Is the unnamed Wooer ready to play because he really loves the girl or is he just after the money that Palamon has now given her as dowry?

Dusty:

Act 5 wraps things up. In 5.1 we get a ceremonious scene that recalls the late romances:  Palamon and Arcite seem to have made up. They embrace and part. Arcite prays to Mars in a longish speech (34-68) and then Palamon, who says he will be “brief,” prays in a much longer speech to Venus (69-135). After they depart Emilia prays to Diana. As she says, she is “maid-hearted,” i.e., prefers to remain a virgin, but will accept whichever one loves her best. In this scene we get stage magic, as each supplicant receives a “token” of the god’s favor: the deer disappears, there is a clash of arms, a flock of doves, a rising rose bush, and then the rose falls to the ground. Each supplicant is grateful, though Emilia less than the two kinsmen: at first she thinks she will live and die a rose (maid), and then seems to realize and accept that this particular rose will be “gathered.” She still seems pretty chilly about the whole thing.

5.2 returns us to the Jailer’s daughter. The cure seems to be working, at least in part: the daughter accepts the Wooer as Palamon, but she is still mad as a hatter. (Even the Doctor concedes that it will take three or four more days.). The daughter is not the least bit chilly. She’s quite forward in suggesting kisses and sex. In this respect she seems like the same girl she was in the earlier part of the play: naively and innocently eager to get to bed. So she is the opposite of Emilia, and makes Emilia seem a little squeamish and asexual. But I wonder how you would play the scene. The Doctor basically seems to think that all she needs to be cured is to get laid. You might think that would lead the audience to snigger.

In 5.3 Emilia doesn’t want to see the combat. And yet she seems to “see” Arcite’s and Palamon’s faces well enough, even though they are presumably helmeted. Or does she imagine seeing them? Shakespeare neatly arranges things so the audience only “sees” the off-stage tournament through her eyes. First Arcite seems to be winning, and then it’s Palamon. The winner gets the girl, and the loser is sentenced to death. (I thought they were both pardoned! Maybe only pardoned for failing to follow Theseus’s orders.) Palamon faces death bravely, and prepares to die with some philosophical observations about how it’s in fact better to die  young. Emilia is distressed, but does not seem to regret that Palamon’s handsome fellow knights must die with him.

Then comes the reversal, with a long speech from Pirithous about Arcite’s riding accident. Why does his speech have to go on for some 40 lines? (Think of how rapidly Shakespeare dispatched characters in other plays: “The queen, my lord, is dead. . .”). There appears to be a connection between Arcite’s “dancing” horse (5.4.58) and the “dancing” horse that the Jailer’s daughter imagined in 5.4.46-54), but I can’t work out why. The dying Arcite is brought on stage and confesses to his kinsman that he was “false” — i.e., apparently, that it was Palamon who saw Emilia first and thus has the greater right. (For men,  I guess love at first sight also means first dibs.) He bequeaths Emilia to Palamon, first giving her a kiss before he dies. (This appears to revisit Romeo’s “thus with a kiss I die” and Othello’s “to die upon a kiss.”)

Emilia seems content to have Arcite, and then equally content to have Palamon. (The Jailer’s daughter parodies this: she is equally content to have Palamon and the Wooer). But she and Palamon exchange no words. Each of them seems more to regret the loss of Arcite than the gaining of each other.

The play ends with the promise of a funeral, to be followed in a couple of days by a wedding. So it’s billed as a tragicomedy.

Theseus provides closure of sorts. Each of the supplicants has a prayer answered: Arcite wins, Palamon gets the girl, and I suppose Emilia gets the one who loves her best. (You could also say that she got what she wanted, i.e., she did not have to make a choice.)  Maybe there’s an irony here too: be careful of what you wish for. Theseus declares that the gods are just, and we perhaps remember how often that claim was made in King Lear, when nobody gets what he wants. It’s thus a little disconcerting to have Theseus also refer to Fortune at 111 (cf.  “tott’ring Fortune” at 5.4.23 — Shakespeare uses “tottering” in several plays) and to the “heavenly charmers” 5.4.130) — who may or may not be the Fates, or just some kind of celestial sorcerers. (“Charmer” is a surprise — the Egyptian “sibyl” who wove Othello’s handkerchief was a “charmer”).

The final lines are somber — “Let’s go off/ And bear us like the time” — but that mood is shattered by the saucy epilogue, spoken perhaps by Theseus, reminding us that it has all been a “play” and a “tale.”

Michael:

Act 5 seems filled with ceremony — and language — and marvelous stage effects, thunder and a battle, music and doves, a vanishing hind and a rose tree with a single rose that falls. The marvels are partially explained as favorable to each of the three, which will seem a puzzle, though the fallen rose is understood by Emilia as a discharge from her virginity. Yes, she’s not excited at the prospect that her rose will fall. (In my text 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 are separate scenes that form a single scene in yours.)

5.4 is the conclusion of the Jailer’s Daughter business. I wonder what the Wooer looks like, a sort of visual parody of Palamon, I’m guessing, and probably comic in the bargain. But the contrast to Emilia must be point of it all, and the ordinariness of the Daughter’s desires and intentions are evident. I think we have some Renaissance physiology at play here. The cure for hysteria, which I think was understood as a displaced or disordered womb, was sex, same as the cure for maiden “greensickness,” which may also afflict the Daughter. This may explain the Doctor’s presence. He sends them off, and the rest of the scene is left to the Wooer and the Daughter. It may be that the very ordinariness of it all, and its seeming good sense, may prevent sniggers. The Daughter’s “But you shall not hurt me,” and his reply “I will not, sweet” may just be part of the married lovers’ prelude to first love-making.

But it’s a long way from the tournament Theseus has arranged, where the three friends of each of the cousins will be subject also to risk of beheading. There is, of course, madness in the idea that the three friends of the loser will also be executed. In the Knight’s Tale there was no insistence that the loser, or any of his friends, would die. In fact I think Theseus had decreed that no dangerous weapons were to be used in the tournament. It’s just winner gets the girl. So the bending of the story toward the death of the loser and his friends is Shakespeare/Fletcher’s “improvement.” As it happens of course nobody gets executed, though Palamon and his buddies escape at the last minute. So the comic ending is snatched from the tragedy that threatened.

The audio that Emilia seeks of the tournament is a rather wonderful evasion of the need to show any of what can’t really be shown; even she won’t witness it. She’s just left with her two pictures and servants to report. This enables the wrapping of Arcite’s death in language in Pirithous’ account when Palamon is snatched from the executioner. Theseus’ sorting out in his last speech may make a kind of sense, but even he throws up his hands, “You heavenly charmers, What things you make of us!” In Chaucer the Knight had made a sort of wisdom out of it all. But this is more of a shrug. We seem at some distance from the conviction of the other romances. My text doesn’t assign the epilogue to Theseus, who exits with the others and a “flourish.” The epilogue seems rather lame; it can’t be Sh., can it?

Dusty:

Good point about the Elizabethan cure for hysteria and greensickness. If the Wooer looks like Palamon, it’s one kind of joke. If he looks completely different, it’s another kind. Thanks for your note on how Shakespeare/Fletcher changed Chaucer: I think S/F tend to subvert the nobility and philosophical wisdom in “The Knight’s Tale.” If Theseus does not deliver the epilogue, who does?