THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN. THE title-page of the original edition runs as follows; The Two Noble Kinsmen: Presented at the Blackfriers by the Kings Maiesties servants, with great applause: Written by the memorable Worthies of their time; (Mr. John Fletcher, and Mr. William Shakspeare. } Gent. Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, for John Waterson: and are to be sold at the signe of the Crowne in Pauls Church-yard. 1634. 4to. It is printed also in the folios of Shakespeare, 1664 and 1685, and in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher, 1679. The story of this tragedy (as the Prologue states) is derived from the well-known Knightes Tale of Chaucer, which is founded on the Teseide of Boccaccio.* Though perfectly convinced that portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen are from Shakespeare's pen, I did not originally intend that it should be inserted in the present edition; but I now reprint it in deference to the opinion of more than one literary friend, who think that the works of the great dramatist can hardly be considered as complete without it.- Both Coleridge and Walker have unhesitatingly expressed their belief that Shakespeare was concerned in the composition of this play. The former says; "I have no doubt whatever that the first act and the first scene of the second act of The Two Noble Kinsmen are Shakespeare's" (Table-Talk, vol. ii. p. 119, ed. 1835; where the reporter of Coleridge's conversation has made a mistake, “the first scene of the second act” being manifestly Fletcher's). The latter observes that "the whole [of the first] act bears indisputable marks of Shakespeare's hand" (Crit. Exam. &c. vol. i. p. 227); that in the first scene of that act we have "surely aut Shakespearius aut diabolus!" (Id. vol. ii. p. 75); and that the first scene of the fifth act "surely is Shakespeare's also" (Id. vol. i. p. 227). See, too, the elaborate Letter on Shakespeare's Authorship of the Two Noble Kinsmen by a very acute critic, Mr. Spalding; who declares that "the whole of the first act may be safely pronounced to be Shakespeare's,"—that "in the second act no part seems to have been taken by Shakespeare," that "nothing in the third act can with confidence be attributed to Shakespeare, except the first scene,”—that "the fourth act may safely be pronounced wholly Fletcher's," that "in the fifth act we again feel the presence of the master of the spell. Several passages in this portion are marked by as striking tokens of his art as any thing which we read in Macbeth or Coriolanus. The whole act, a very long one, * Every lover of Italian poetry must regret that there is no good critical edition of the Teseide. Now that Mr. Panizzi has resigned the office which he has so long and so ably filled, could he employ his leisure more pleasantly to himself or more usefully to the public than in doing for that fine poem of Boccaccio what he did in former years for the Orlandos of Bojardo and Ariosto? may be boldly attributed to him, with the exception of one episodical scene.' For my own part, I believe that Shakespeare wrote all those portions of the play which Mr. Spalding assigns to him, though I conceive that in some places they may have been altered and interpolated by Fletcher.-I must now be allowed to quote from the Account of the Lives and Writings of Beaumont and Fletcher, which is prefixed to my edition of their works; "The tale of Chaucer on which The Two Noble Kinsmen is founded, had been dramatised at a much earlier period. A play called Palamon and Arcyte† (by Richard Edwards) was performed before Queen Elizabeth in the hall of Christ-Church, Oxford, in 1566; and we learn from Henslowe's Diary that a piece entitled Palamon and Arsett was acted several times at the Newington theatre in 1594. Mr. Collier conjectures that the lastmentioned piece may have been a rifacimento of Edwards's play, and that in 1594 Shakespeare may have introduced into Palamon and Arsett those alterations and additions which afterwards 'were employed by Fletcher in the play as it was printed in 1634.'§ But I suspect that the Palamon and Arsett of 1594 was a distinct piece from the academical drama of 1566; and I cannot persuade myself that the 'Shakespearian' portions of The Two Noble Kinsmen were composed so early as 1594,-stamped as they every where are with the manner of Shakespeare's later years." p. lxxxv. I feel assured, however, that they existed before Fletcher contributed any thing to the play; in other words, that the two poets did not work on it simultaneously. Fletcher's contributions "include the distraction of the Gaoler's Daughter, which in some points is a direct plagiarism of Ophelia's madness in Hamlet; and it is highly improbable that, if the two dramatists had worked together on the tragedy, Fletcher would have ventured to make so free with the poetical property of Shakespeare: indeed, I fully assent to the truth of Mr. Knight's remark, that the underplot, the love of the Gaoler's Daughter for Palamon, her agency in his escape from prison, her subsequent madness, and her unnatural and revolting union with one who is her lover under these circumstances,-is of a nature not to be conceived by Shakespeare, and further not to be tolerated in any work with which he was concerned.'" p. lxxxvi. Fletcher died in August 1625: but how long previous to the close of his career he was employed on The Two Noble Kinsmen, we are unable to determine: nor are we less uncertain at what date it was originally brought upon the stage. i. e., according to the present edition, the second scene of act five. Mr. Spalding (following Weber's division of scenes) mentions it as scene 4. This piece has perished. Weber, Spalding, and others (deceived by that arch-inventor of editions, Chetwood) mention it as having been printed in 1585. Henslowe's Diary, pp. 41, 43, 44, ed. Shake. Soc. § Id. p. 41. PROLOGUE. NEW plays and maidenheads are near akin; More of the maid to sight than husband's pains. A learned, and a poet never went More famous yet 'twixt Po and silver Trent: If we let fall the nobleness of this, And the first sound this child hear be a hiss, [Flourish. That blasts my bays, and my fam'd works makes lighter For, to say truth, it were an endless thing, A little dull time from us, we perceive [Flourish. |