(Mis) Appropriating the Romance Past in The Two Noble Kinsmen

Abstract

In what is probably the most influential discussion to date of the relation between The Knight’s Tale and The Two Noble Kinsmen — a relation based on frankly acknowledged adaptation — Philip Edwards leans heavily on ‘a Chaucerian view of the frailty of our determinations’ (99) in making his case for a fundamental continuity of vision. Shakespeare and Fletcher, apparently, are far from misappropriating the precursor romance, even if they skew its rueful irony regarding human subjection to chance, coincidence, and above all Venus to match the intensely personal bitterness of a Shakespeare ‘looking dim-eyed at innocence and seeing salvation disappear with puberty’ (104). It is as if the world-weary bard, having just recently bid farewell to the imperfect magic of his art in The Tempest, returns for a curtain call in the role of Theseus, presiding sagely over the fading of another insubstantial pageant:

O you heavenly charmers, What things you make of us! For what we lack We laugh, for what we have are sorry, still Are children in some kind. Let us be thankful For that which is, and with you leave dispute That are above our question. Let’s go off, And bear us like the time.