The Two Noble Kinsmen

by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher

seen at Shakespeare's Globe on 31 May 2018

This collaborative play, not included n the First Folio of Shakespeare's collected works, has gained inclusion in modern 'complete' editions, but it is still rarely performed. Barrie Rutter directs Bryan Dick as Arcite, Paul Stocker as Palamon, Ellora Torchia as Emilia, Francesca Mills as the Jailer's daughter, Moyo Akandé as Hippolyta and Jude Akewudike as Theseus in a production that makes a strong case for the play's revival.

The story, used also by Chaucer in his Knight's Tale, concerns the cousins Arcite and Palamon, both tken prisoner by Theseus when he defeats their uncle, and both recognised as valorous men even in captivity. Their intense friendship is broken when both fall in love with Emilia (Hippolyta's sister, Theseus's sister-in-law). In a trice their earnest protestations of eternal loyalty and blissful satisfaction in the joys of amity are forgotten and they are (or want to be) at each other's throats. Theseus releases Arcite to banishment, but he determines to remain close to Emilia despite his peril. The jailer's daughter, in love with Palamon, arranges for his escape but falls into a madness when he ignores her. The two cousins meet again in the forest and decide to fight for Emilia's love; they are interrupted by Theseus and his followers who are out hunting, and the king decrees a formal combat and compels Emilia to accept that the winner will be her husband and the loser will lose his life.

One can tell from this short summary that the plot is fanciful, not to say superficial. The ideal of male friendship eulogised at the beginning is not to modern taste, but the brutality of the love quarrel also offends by its bleak outcome and by the burden so thoughtlessly placed on the woman: Emilia is unaware until quite late in the play that either of the two young men is in love with her (even though Arcite, in disguise, has been made her servant) and so the story is not really about her or her feelings at all. The parallel with the hapless (and unnamed) jailer's daughter, who finally agrees to marry a suitor who has been dressed as Palamon on the suggestion of a doctor trying to cure her madness, only adds to the sense that women are getting a raw deal in this fantastical world.

Yet this production is full of energy and confidence, blithely unconcerned by the questionable sexual politics and the unlikely turns of the plot. It opens in festive vein with the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta celebrated by morris dancers, and this sets a tone of theatricality which allows all hat follows to be accepted as entertainment despite the darker undertones. The speeches, though often  rather too high-flown to reveal serious depth of character, nonetheless raise issues of loyalty and conflict, while the intertwined story of the jailer's daughter provides both a contrast to and a commentary on the lofty posturings of the nobility.

I found myself enjoying this play immensely, having approached it with only modest expectations. Though it is not a great work, and though it punctures the almost sentimental idea that Shakespeare made a grand farewell to his writing life with the great abjurations of Prospero in The Tempest (since this lay was written after that), it turns out that in a good production such as this one, it can easily hold the attention of an audience. In this case there were a number of primary school children among the groundlings, and they appeared to be almost continuously attentive, which I take to be a sure sign that all was going well on the stage. Clear speaking, strong acting, good music, all without electronic amplification: this is what the Globe is good at.