Additional information
by William Shakespeare (Author)
Honor and Dignity-- Two Noble Kinsmen is based on Geoffrey Chaucer's the Knight's Tale. Three queens ask Theseus and Hippolyta to avenge the deaths of their husbands at the hands of the tyrant Creon of Thebes. Theseus agrees and wages a war that changes the fate of many those involved. The play ends with a public tournament.
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The king of Thebes is a tyrant but his young relatives, Palamon and Arcite, defend him anyway. The two noble kinsmen find their loyalty rewarded with imprisonment when they end up on the losing side of a battle with the great hero, Theseus of Athens. From the window of their jail they observe Emilia, the sister-in-law of their conqueror, whose stunning beauty shatters their vow of eternal brotherhood. Now the former friends must find a way to evade their captors and pursue the alluring princess, an undertaking that will conclude with a fight to the death.
First published in 1634, this Jacobean tragicomedy features a plot derived from "The Knight's Tale" in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales." The play was originally attributed to both John Fletcher and William Shakespeare; its association with the latter is a longstanding source of controversy that is now generally accepted by scholarly consensus.
Dover (2015) reprint of a standard edition.
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Author Biography
William Shakespeare was born to John Shakespeare and Mary Arden in late April 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon. He wrote about 38 plays (the precise number is uncertain), many of which are regarded as the most exceptional works of drama ever produced, including Romeo and Juliet (1595), Henry V (1599), Hamlet (1601), Othello (1604), King Lear (1606) and Macbeth (1606), as well as a collection of 154 sonnets, which number among the most profound and influential love poetry in English. Shakespeare died in Stratford in 1616.
