William Shakespeare and John Fletcher based The Two Noble Kinsmen on Geoffrey Chaucer’s well-known work of medieval literature, The Canterbury Tales, a satirical collection of stories written mostly in verse. The particular story that The Two Noble Kinsmen draws from, “The Knight’s Tale,” explores themes that relate to the chivalric code, a set of rules that governed the behavior of medieval knights and gentlemen. Though The Two Noble Kinsmen is set in Ancient Greece rather than medieval England, the same moral code shapes its characters, whose shared desire to embody the virtues of loyalty, piety, generosity, bravery, and a commitment to courtly manners influences their actions and decisions. For example, when Theseus leaves his wedding to battle Creon, he does so out of a sense of duty to the Three Queens who call on him to avenge their husbands’ deaths. Likewise, Arcite and Palamon remain in Thebes to defend the city against Theseus’s Athenian army—despite their personal disapproval of Creon’s corrupt kingdom—out of a chivalric sense of duty to defend their homeland.
This strong sense of duty to an external value system allows characters in The Two Noble Kinsmen to accept the trials that befall them, even in the face of death. For example, in Act 3, Scene 6, Theseus’s hunting party interrupts Arcite and Palamon’s duel. Angry at the cousins for disrespecting his authority (Palamon has escaped from prison, and Arcite has returned to Athens in disguise after Theseus banished him), Theseus sentences them to death. But even though Emilia eventually convinces Theseus to spare the cousins, they reject the offer. They would both rather put their lives on the line than live as cowards and traitors to their personal chivalric causes (love for Palamon, victory for Arcite). The same sense of honor ultimately gives Arcite the strength to accept his fate when he is mortally wounded, as he confesses his wrongs against Palamon and asks for Palamon’s forgiveness. In The Two Noble Kinsmen, characters’ commitment to the chivalric code keeps them focused on maintaining their honor—even when doing so means facing danger, hardship, or death. At the same time, the play complicates an uncritical view of chivalry by presenting situations in which the cousins’ intense devotion to the chivalric code leads them to become so wrapped up in notions of honor that they actively turn down opportunities to avoid violence. In the above example, Emilia offers Arcite and Palamon an opportunity to escape Athens unscathed, yet they stubbornly insist on staying behind to fight because they’d rather die than appear weak and dishonorable. The play highlights Arcite and Palamon’s stubborn adherence to the chivalric code to show just how devoted knights were to defending their honor—so devoted, in fact, that they’d die before they injure their pride.
Chivalry, Honor, and Pride ThemeTracker
Chivalry, Honor, and Pride Quotes in The Two Noble Kinsmen
Let th’ event,
That never-erring arbitrator, tell us
When we know all ourselves, and let us follow
The becking of our chance.
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. I think
Theseus cannot be umpire to himself,
Cleaving his conscience into twin and doing
Each side like justice, which he loves best.
You’re out of breath,
And this high-speeded pace is but to say
That you shall never—like the maid Flavina—
Love any that’s called man.
Th’ impartial gods, who from the mounted heavens
View us their mortal herd, behold who err
And, in their time, chastise.
Nay, most likely, for they are noble suff’rers.
I marvel how they would have looked had they
been victors, that with such a constant nobility enforce
a freedom out of bondage, making misery
their mirth and affliction a toy to jest at.
Yet, cousin,
Even from the bottom of these miseries,
From all that fortune can inflict upon us,
I see two comforts rising, two mere blessings,
If the gods please: to hold here a brave patience,
And the enjoying of our griefs together.
Whilst Palamon is with me, let me perish
If I think this our prison!
Men are mad things.
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! When the north comes near her,
Rude and impatient, then, like chastity,
She locks her beauties in her bud again,
And leave him to base briers.
Have I called thee friend?
I shall live
To knock thy brains out[.]
[…] To marry him is hopeless;
To be his whore is witless.
Mark how his virtue, like a hidden sun,
Breaks through his baser garments
I love him beyond love and beyond reason
Or wit or safety. I have made him know it;
I care not, I am desperate.
Here, Palamon. This hand shall never more
Come near thee with such friendship.
I’ll be cut a-pieces
Before I take this oath!
No, never duke. ’Tis worse to me than begging
To take my life so basely; though I think
I shall never enjoy her, yet I’ll preserve
The honor of affection, and die for her,
Make death a devil!
What sins have I committed, chaste Diana,
That my unspotted youth must now be soiled
With blood of princes, and my chastity
Be made the altar where the lives of lovers—
Two greater and two better never yet
Made mothers joy—must be the sacrifice
To my unhappy beauty?
’Tis pity love should be so tyrannous.—
O, my soft-hearted sister, what think you?
Weep not till they weep blood. Wench, it must be.
Poor wench, go weep, for whosoever wins
Loses a noble cousin for thy sins.
Hail, sovereign queen of secrets, who hast power
To call the fiercest tyrant from his rage
And weep unto a girl[.]
Is this winning?
O all you heavenly powers, where is your mercy?
But that your wills have said it must be so,
And charge me live to comfort this unfriended,
This miserable prince, that cuts away
a life more worthy from him than all women,
I should and would die too.
Infinite pity
That four such eyes should be so fixed on one
That two must needs be blind for ‘t.
His part is played, and though it were too short,
He did it well.
[…] O you heavenly charmers,
What things you make of us! For what we lack
We laugh, for what we have are sorry, still
Are children in some kind.