Like old importment's bastard) has this end,
That the true love 'tween maid and maid may be
More than in sex dividual....
Act I. scene iv. Shakspere's.
The fourth scene is laid in a battle-field near Thebes, and Theseus enters victorious. The three queens fall down with thanks before him; and a herald announces the capture of the Two Noble Kinsmen, wounded and senseless, and scarcely retaining the semblance of life. Has Shakspere's words and quibbles. The phraseology of this short scene is like Shakspeare's, being brief and energetic, and in one or two instances passing into quibbles.
Act I. scene v. is Shakspere's.
The last scene of this act is of a lyrical cast, and comprised in a few lamentations spoken by the widowed queens over the corpses of their dead lords. It ends with this couplet:
The world's a city full of straying streets,
And death's the market-place, where each one meets.
Act II. not Shakspere's.
In the Second Act no part seems to have been taken by Shakspeare. The prose of II. i. is not from Chaucer, It commences with one of those scenes which are introduced into the play in departure from the narrative of Chaucer, forming an underplot which is clearly the work of a different artist from many of the leading parts of the drama. The Noble Kinsmen, cured of their wounds, have been committed to strait and perpetual prison in Athens, and the first part of this scene is a prose dialogue between their jailor and a suitor of his daughter. The maiden's admiration of the prisoners is then exhibited. and is very dull: it is not Shakspere's. You will see afterwards, that there are several circumstances besides the essential dulness of this prose part, which fully absolve Shakspeare from the charge of having written it.
The verse of Act II. scene i.
The versified portion of this scene, which follows the prose dialogue among the inferior characters, presents the incident on which the interest of the story hinges, the commencement of the fatal and chimerical passion, which, inspiring both the knights towards the young Emilia, severs the bonds of friendship which had so long held them together. The noble prisoners are discovered in their turret-chamber, looking out on the palace-garden, which the lady afterwards enters. They speak [35:1]in a highly animated strain of that