Instances of Shakspere's Personification in The Two Noble Kinsmen.
Thou (Love) mayst force the king
To be his subject's vassal, and induce
Stale Gravity to dance;—the pollèd bachelor,
Whose youth, (like wanton boys through bon|fires,)
[26:1]Has skipt thy flame, at seventy thou canst catch,
And make him, to the scorn of his hoarse throat,
Abuse young lays of love.—Act V. scene ii.
Mercy and manly Cour|age
Are bed fellows in his visage.—Act V. scene v.
Our Reasons are not proph|ets,
When oft our Fancies are.—Act V. scene v.
The hints which you have now perused, are not, I repeat, offered to you as by any means exhausting the elements of Shakspeare's manner of writing. They are meant only to bring to your memory such of his qualities of style as chiefly distinguish him from Fletcher, and are most prominently present in the play we are examining. In bits of the Two Noble Kinsmen several of Shakspere's distinctive qualities are often combin'd. When we shall see those qualities instanced singly, they will afford a proof of Shakspeare's authorship: but that proof will receive an incalculable accession of strength when, as will more frequently happen, we shall have several of them displayed at once in the same passages. Your recollection of them will serve us as the lines of a map would in a journey on foot through a wild forest country: the beauty of the landscape will tempt us not seldom to diverge and lose sight of our path, and we shall need their guidance for enabling us to regain it.
The story of Palamon and Arcite.
The story of Palamon and Arcite is a celebrated one, and, besides its appearance here, has been taken up by other two of our greatest English poets. Chaucer borrowed the tale from the Teseide of Boccaccio: it then received a dramatic form in this play; and from Chaucer's antique sketch it was afterwards decorated with the
trappings of heroic rhyme, by one who fell on evil days, the lofty and unfortunate Dryden. Character of the story of Palamon and Arcite. It treats of a period of ancient and almost fabulous history, which originally belonged to the classical writers, but had become familiar in the chivalrous poetry of the middle ages; and retaining the old historical characters, it intersperses with them new ones wholly imaginary, and, both in the Knightes Tale and in the play, preserves the rich and anomalous magnificence of the Gothic cos[27:1]tume. Theseus the centre of The Two Noble Kinsmen. The character round which the others are grouped, one which Shakspeare has introduced in another of his works, is the heroic Theseus, whom the romances and chronicles dignify with the modern title of Duke of Athens; and in this story he is connected with the tragical war of the Seven against Thebes, one of the grandest subjects of the ancient Grecian poetry.
First Act of Two Noble Kinsmen Shakspere's.