From the Paper with which Mr J. Herbert Stack opend the discussion at our Reading of the Two Noble Kinsmen, he has allowd me to make the following extracts:—
To judge the question clearly, let us note how far the author or authors of the Two N. K. followed what was the basis of their drama—Chaucer's Knightes Tale. We have there the same opening incident—the petitions of the Queens, then the capture of the Two, then their sight of Emily from the prison window, the release of Arcite, his entry into Emilia's service, the escape of Palamon, the fight in the wood, the decree of Theseus, the prayers to Diana, Venus, and Mars, the combat, the victory in arms to Arcite, his death, and Palamon's eventual victory in love. But Chaucer is far superior to the dramatists. He has no Gaoler's Daughter to distract our thoughts. The language of his Palamon is more blunt, more soldierlike, more characteristic. His Emilia, instead of being equally in love with two men at the same time, prefers maidenhood to marriage, loves neither, but pities both. At the end of the play we have something coarse and hurried: Emilia, during the Tournament, is ready to jump into anybody's arms, so that he comes victorious; then she accepts Arcite; and on his sudden death, she dries her tears with more than the supposed celerity of a modern fashionable widow; and, before she is the widow of Arcite, consents to become the wife of Palamon. Contrast this with Chaucer, where the poem dedicates some beautiful lines to the funeral of Arcite and the grief of all, and only makes Emilia yield after years to the silent pleading of the woful Palamon and the urgency of her brother. Contrast the dying speeches in the two works. In the play, Arcite transfers Emilia almost as if he were making a will: "Item, I leave my bride to Palamon." In Chaucer, he says to Emilia that he knows of no man
'So worthy to be loved as Palamon,
And if that you shal ever be a wyf
Forget not Palamon that gentil man.'
Now here we have a play founded on a poem, the original delicate and noble, where the other is coarse and trivial; and we ask, 'Was this Shakspere's way of treating his originals?' In his earlier years he based his Romeo and Juliet on Brooke's poem of the same name—a fine work, and little disfigured by the coarseness of the time. Yet he pruned it of all really offensive matter, and has given us a perfect love-story, as ardent as it is pure. His skill in omission is remarkably shown in one respect. In Brooke's poem, Juliet, reflecting when alone on Romeo's sudden love, remembers that he is an enemy to her house, and suspects that he
may intend dishonourable love as a base means of wreaking vengeance on hereditary foes. It seems to me that a thought so cunning is out of character with Juliet—certainly would have been felt as a stain on Shakspere's Juliet. That Shakspere deliberately omitted this, is known by one slight reference. Juliet says to Romeo,
'If thy intent of love be honourable,
Thy purpose marriage.'
That is all—no cunning caution, no base doubt.
Now if in this original, and in this play, we trace the very manner of Shakspere's working—taking up gold mixed with dross, and purifying it in the furnace of his genius—are we to suppose that later in life, with taste more fastidious, even if his imagination were less strong, he carried out a converse process; that he took Chaucer's gold, and mixed it with alloy? That, I greatly doubt. Also, would he imitate himself so closely as he is imitated in certain scenes of the Two N. K.?
Another point. Love between persons of very different rank has been held by many dramatists to be a fine subject for the stage. Shakspere never introduces it. Ophelia loves a Prince, and Violet a duke, and Rosalind a Squire's son; but gentlehood unites all. Helena in All's Well is a gentlewoman. With anything like levelling aspirations Shakspere had clearly no sympathy. In no undoubted play of his have we, so far as I remember, any attempt to make the love of the lowly born for the high a subject of sympathy: there is no Beggar maid to any of his King Cophetuas. Goneril and Regan stoop to Edmund through baseness; Malvolio's love for Olivia is made ridiculous. The Gaoler's Daughter of the Two N. K. stands alone: like the waiting-maid in the Critic, she goes mad in white linen, and as painfully recalls Ophelia, as our cousins the monkeys remind us of men.
In some other respects the poem is far superior to the play. Chaucer introduces the supernatural powers with excellent effect and tact—so as to soften the rigour of the Duke's decrees. In the Temple, Palamon, the more warlike in manners of the two, is the more reckless and ardent in his love: of a simpler nature, Venus entirely subdues and, at the same time, effectually befriends him. He prays to her not for Victory: for that he cares not: it matters not how events are brought about 'so that I have my lady in mine arms.' Arcite, the softer and more refined knight, prays simply for Victory. If it be true that love changes the nature of men, here we have the transformation. The prayer of each is granted, though they seem opposed—thus Arcite experiences what many of those who consulted old oracles found, 'the word of promise kept to the ear, broken to the hope.' Then in the poem Theseus freely forgives the two knights, but decides on the Tournament as a means of seeing who shall have Emilia. In the play he decides that one is to live and marry, the other to die. The absurdity of this needless cruelty is evident: it was possibly introduced to satisfy the coarse tastes of the audiences who liked the sight of an executioner and a block.