Текст книги "William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition"

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THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

BY JOHN FLETCHER AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

WHEN it first appeared in print, in 1634, The Two Noble Kinsmen was stated to be ‘by the memorable worthies of their time, Mr John Fletcher, and Mr William Shakespeare’. There is no reason to disbelieve this ascription: many plays of the period were not printed till long after they were acted, and there is other evidence that Shakespeare collaborated with Fletcher (1579―1625). The morris dance in Act 3, Scene 5, contains characters who also appear in Francis Beaumont’s Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray’s Inn performed before James I on 20 February 1613. Their dance was a great success with the King; probably the King’s Men—some of whom may have taken part in the masque—decided to exploit its success by incorporating it in a play written soon afterwards, in the last year of Shakespeare’s playwriting life.

The Two Noble Kinsmen, a tragicomedy of the kind that became popular during the last years of the first decade of the seventeenth century, is based on Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, on which Shakespeare had already drawn for episodes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It tells a romantic tale of the conflicting claims of love and friendship: the ‘two noble kinsmen’, Palamon and Arcite, are the closest of friends until each falls in love with Emilia, sister-in-law of Theseus, Duke of Athens. Their conflict is finally resolved by a formal combat with Emilia as the prize, in which the loser is to be executed. Arcite wins, and Palamon’s head is on the block as news arrives that Arcite has been thrown from his horse. Dying, Arcite commends Emilia to his friend, and Theseus rounds off the play with a meditation on the paradoxes of fortune.

Studies of style suggest that Shakespeare was primarily responsible for the rhetorically and ritualistically impressive Act 1, for Act 2, Scene 1. Act 3, Scenes 1 and 2; and for most of Act 5 (Scene 4 excepted), which includes emblematically spectacular episodes related to his other late plays. Fletcher appears mainly to have written the scenes showing the rivalry of Palamon and Arcite along with the sub-plots concerned with the Jailer’s daughter’s love for Palamon and the rustics’ entertainment for Theseus.

Though the play was adapted by William Davenant as The Rivals (1664), its first known performances since the seventeenth century were at the Old Vic in 1928; it has been played only occasionally since then, but was chosen to open the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1986. Critical interest, too, has been slight; but Shakespeare’s contributions are entirely characteristic of his late style, and Fletcher’s scenes are both touching and funny.

THE PERSONS OF THE PLAY

PROLOGUE

THESEUS, Duke of Athens

HIPPOLYTA, Queen of the Amazons, later wife of Theseus

EMILIA, her sister

PIRITHOUS, friend of Theseus

Hymen, god of marriage

A BOY, who sings

ARTESIUS, an Athenian soldier

Three QUEENS, widows of kings killed in the siege of Thebes

VALERIUS, a Theban

A HERALD

WOMAN, attending Emilia

An Athenian GENTLEMAN

MESSENGERS

Six KNIGHTS, three attending Arcite and three Palamon

A SERVANT

A JAILER in charge of Theseus’ prison

The JAILER’S DAUGHTER

The JAILER’S BROTHER

The WOOER of the Jailer’s daughter

Two FRIENDS of the Jailer

A DOCTOR

Six COUNTRYMEN, one dressed as a babion, or baboon

Gerald, a SCHOOLMASTER

NELL, a country wench

Four other country wenches: Friz, Madeline, Luce, and Barbara Timothy, a TABORER

EPILOGUE

Nymphs, attendants, maids, executioner, guard

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Prologue Flourish. Enter Prologue

PROLOGUE

New plays and maidenheads are near akin:

Much followed both, for both much money giv’n

If they stand sound and well. And a good play,

Whose modest scenes blush on his marriage day

And shake to lose his honour, is like her

That after holy tie and first night’s stir

Yet still is modesty, and still retains

More of the maid to sight than husband’s pains.

We pray our play may be so, for I am sure

It has a noble breeder and a pure,

A learned, and a poet never went

More famous yet ‘twixt Po and silver Trent.

Chaucer, of all admired, the story gives:

There constant to eternity it lives.

If we let fall the nobleness of this

And the first sound this child hear be a hiss,

How will it shake the bones of that good man,

And make him cry from under ground, ‛O fan

From me the witless chaff of such a writer,

That blasts my bays and my famed works makes

lighter

Than Robin Hood’? This is the fear we bring,

For to say truth, it were an endless thing

And too ambitious to aspire to him,

Weak as we are, and almost breathless swim

In this deep water. Do but you hold out

Your helping hands and we shall tack about

And something do to save us. You shall hear

Scenes, though below his art, may yet appear

Worth two hours’ travail. To his bones, sweet sleep;

Content to you. If this play do not keep

A little dull time from us, we perceive

Our losses fall so thick we must needs leave.

Flourish. Exit

1.1 Music. Enter Hymen with a torch burning, a Boy in a white robe before, singing and strewing flowers. After Hymen, a nymph encompassed in her tresses, bearing a wheaten garland. Then Theseus between two other nymphs with wheaten chaplets on their heads. Then Hippolyta, the bride, led by Pirithous and another holding a garland over her head, her tresses likewise hanging. After her, Emilia holding up her train. Then Artesius ⌈and other attendants⌉

BOY (sings during procession)

Roses, their sharp spines being gone,

Not royal in their smells alone,

But in their hue;

Maiden pinks, of odour faint,

Daisies smell-less, yet most quaint,

And sweet thyme true;

Primrose, first-born child of Ver,

Merry springtime’s harbinger,

With harebells dim;

Oxlips, in their cradles growing,

Marigolds, on deathbeds blowing,

Lark’s-heels trim;

All dear nature’s children sweet,

Lie fore bride and bridegroom’s feet,

He strews flowers

Blessing their sense.

Not an angel of the air,

Bird melodious, or bird fair,

Is absent hence.

The crow, the sland’rous cuckoo, nor

The boding raven, nor chough hoar,

Nor chatt’ring pie,

May on our bridehouse perch or sing,

Or with them any discord bring,

But from it fly.

Enter three Queens in black, with veils stained, with imperial crowns. The First Queen falls down at the foot of Theseus; the Second falls down at the foot of Hippolyta; the Third, before Emilia

FIRST QUEEN (to Theseus)

For pity’s sake and true gentility’s,

Hear and respect me.

SECOND QUEEN (to Hippolyta)

For your mother’s sake, And as you wish your womb may thrive with fair ones,

Hear and respect me.

THIRD QUEEN (to Emilia)

Now for the love of him whom Jove hath marked

The honour of your bed, and for the sake

Of clear virginity, be advocate

For us and our distresses. This good deed

Shall raze you out o’th’ Book of Trespasses

All you are set down there.

THESEUS (to First Queen)

Sad lady, rise.

HIPPOLYTA (to Second Queen) Stand up.

EMILIA (to Third Queen)

No knees to me. What woman I may stead that is distressed

Does bind me to her.

THESEUS (to First Queen)

What’s your request? Deliver you for all.

FIRST QUEEN ⌈kneeling still⌉

We are three queens whose sovereigns fell before

The wrath of cruel Creon; who endured

The beaks of ravens, talons of the kites,

And pecks of crows in the foul fields of Thebes.

He will not suffer us to burn their bones,

To urn their ashes, nor to take th‘offence

Of mortal loathsomeness from the blest eye

Of holy Phoebus, but infects the winds

With stench of our slain lords. O pity, Duke!

Thou purger of the earth, draw thy feared sword

That does good turns to’th’ world; give us the bones

Of our dead kings that we may chapel them;

And of thy boundless goodness take some note

That for our crowned heads we have no roof,

Save this, which is the lion’s and the bear’s,

And vault to everything.

THESEUS

Pray you, kneel not: I was transported with your speech, and suffered

Your knees to wrong themselves. I have heard the

fortunes

Of your dead lords, which gives me such lamenting

As wakes my vengeance and revenge for ’em.

King Capaneus was your lord: the day

That he should marry you—at such a season

As now it is with me—I met your groom

By Mars’s altar. You were that time fair,

Not Juno’s mantle fairer than your tresses,

Nor in more bounty spread her. Your wheaten wreath

Was then nor threshed nor blasted; fortune at you 6

Dimpled her cheek with smiles; Hercules our

kinsman—

Then weaker than your eyes—laid by his club.

He tumbled down upon his Nemean hide

And swore his sinews thawed. O grief and time,

Fearful consumers, you will all devour.

FIRST QUEEN ⌈kneeling still⌉

O, I hope some god, Some god hath put his mercy in your manhood,

Whereto he’ll infuse power and press you forth

Our undertaker.

THESEUS

O no knees, none, widow:

⌈The First Queen rises⌉

Unto the helmeted Bellona use them

And pray for me, your soldier. Troubled I am.

He turns away

SECOND QUEEN ⌈kneeling still⌉

Honoured Hippolyta, Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain

The scythe-tusked boar, that with thy arm, as strong

As it is white, wast near to make the male

To thy sex captive, but that this, thy lord—

Born to uphold creation in that honour

First nature styled it in—shrunk thee into

The bound thou wast o‘erflowing, at once subduing

Thy force and thy affection; soldieress,

That equally canst poise sternness with pity,

Whom now I know hast much more power on him

Than ever he had on thee, who ow’st his strength,

And his love too, who is a servant for

The tenor of thy speech; dear glass of ladies,

Bid him that we, whom flaming war doth scorch,

Under the shadow of his sword may cool us.

Require him he advance it o‘er our heads.

Speak’t in a woman’s key, like such a woman

As any of us three. Weep ere you fail.

Lend us a knee:

But touch the ground for us no longer time

Than a dove’s motion when the head’s plucked off.

Tell him, if he i’th’ blood-sized field lay swoll’n,

Showing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,

What you would do.

HIPPOLYTA

Poor lady, say no more.

I had as lief trace this good action with you

As that whereto I am going, and never yet

Went I so willing way. My lord is taken

Heart-deep with your distress. Let him consider.

I’ll speak anon.

⌈The Second Queen rises⌉

THIRD QUEEN (kneeling ⌈still⌉ to Emilia)

O, my petition was

Set down in ice, which by hot grief uncandied

Melts into drops; so sorrow, wanting form,

Is pressed with deeper matter.

EMILIA

Pray stand up:

Your grief is written in your cheek.

THIRD QUEEN

O woe,

You cannot read it there; there, through my tears,

Like wrinkled pebbles in a glassy stream,

You may behold ’em.

⌈The Third Queen rises⌉

Lady, lady, alack—

He that will all the treasure know o’th’ earth

Must know the centre too; he that will fish

For my least minnow, let him lead his line

To catch one at my heart. O, pardon me:

Extremity, that sharpens sundry wits,

Makes me a fool.

EMILIA

Pray you, say nothing, pray you.

Who cannot feel nor see the rain, being in’t,

Knows neither wet nor dry. If that you were

The ground-piece of some painter, I would buy you

T’instruct me ’gainst a capital grief, indeed

Such heart-pierced demonstration; but, alas,

Being a natural sister of our sex,

Your sorrow beats so ardently upon me

That it shall make a counter-reflect ’gainst

My brother’s heart, and warm it to some pity,

Though it were made of stone. Pray have good

comfort.

THESEUS

Forward to th’ temple. Leave not out a jot

O’th’ sacred ceremony.

FIRST QUEEN

O, this celebration

Will longer last and be more costly than

Your suppliants’ war. Remember that your fame

Knolls in the ear o’th’ world: what you do quickly

Is not done rashly; your first thought is more

Than others’ laboured meditance; your premeditating

More than their actions. But, O Jove, your actions,

Soon as they move, as ospreys do the fish,

Subdue before they touch. Think, dear Duke, think

What beds our slain kings have.

SECOND QUEEN

What griefs our beds,

That our dear lords have none.

THIRD QUEEN

None fit for th’ dead.

Those that with cords, knives, drams, precipitance,

Weary of this world’s light, have to themselves

Been death’s most horrid agents, human grace

Affords them dust and shadow.

FIRST QUEEN

But our lords

Lie blist’ring fore the visitating sun,

And were good kings, when living.

THESEUS

It is true,

And I will give you comfort to give your dead lords

graves,

The which to do must make some work with Creon.

FIRST QUEEN

And that work presents itself to th’ doing.

Now ’twill take form, the heats are gone tomorrow.

Then, bootless toil must recompense itself

With its own sweat; now he’s secure,

Not dreams we stand before your puissance

Rinsing our holy begging in our eyes

To make petition clear.

SECOND QUEEN

Now you may take him,

Drunk with his victory.

THIRD QUEEN

And his army full

Of bread and sloth.

THESEUS

Artesius, that best knowest How to draw out, fit to this enterprise

The prim’st for this proceeding and the number

To carry such a business: forth and levy

Our worthiest instruments, whilst we dispatch

This grand act of our life, this daring deed

Of fate in wedlock.

FIRST QUEEN (to the other two Queens)

Dowagers, take hands;

Let us be widows to our woes; delay

Commends us to a famishing hope.

ALL THREE QUEENS

Farewell.

SECOND QUEEN

We come unseasonably, but when could grief

Cull forth, as unpanged judgement can, fitt’st time

For best solicitation?

THESEUS

Why, good ladies,

This is a service whereto I am going

Greater than any war—it more imports me

Than all the actions that I have foregone,

Or futurely can cope.

FIRST QUEEN

The more proclaiming

Our suit shall be neglected when her arms,

Able to lock Jove from a synod, shall

By warranting moonlight corslet thee! O when

Her twinning cherries shall their sweetness fall

Upon thy tasteful lips, what wilt thou think

Of rotten kings or blubbered queens? What care

For what thou feel’st not, what thou feel’st being able

To make Mars spurn his drum? O, if thou couch

But one night with her, every hour in’t will

Take hostage of thee for a hundred, and

Thou shalt remember nothing more than what

That banquet bids thee to.

HIPPOLYTA (to Theseus)

Though much unlike

You should be so transported, as much sorry

I should be such a suitor—yet I think

Did I not by th’abstaining of my joy,

Which breeds a deeper longing, cure their surfeit

That craves a present medicine, I should pluck

All ladies’ scandal on me. ⌈Kneels⌉ Therefore, sir,

As I shall here make trial of my prayers,

Either presuming them to have some force,

Or sentencing for aye their vigour dumb,

Prorogue this business we are going about, and hang

Your shield afore your heart—about that neck

Which is my fee, and which I freely lend

To do these poor queens service.

ALL THREE QUEENS (to Emilia)

O, help now,

Our cause cries for your knee.

EMILIA (kneels to Theseus)

If you grant not

My sister her petition in that force

With that celerity and nature which

She makes it in, from henceforth I’ll not dare

To ask you anything, nor be so hardy

Ever to take a husband.

THESEUS

Pray stand up.

⌈They rise⌉

I am entreating of myself to do

That which you kneel to have me.—Pirithous,

Lead on the bride: get you and pray the gods

For success and return; omit not anything

In the pretended celebration.—Queens,

Follow your soldier. (To Artesius) As before, hence you,

And at the banks of Aulis meet us with

The forces you can raise, where we shall find

The moiety of a number for a business

More bigger looked.

Exit Artesius

(To Hippolyta) Since that our theme is haste,

I stamp this kiss upon thy current lip—

Sweet, keep it as my token. (To the wedding party) Set

you forward,

For I will see you gone.

(To Emilia) Farewell, my beauteous sister.—Pirithous,

Keep the feast full: bate not an hour on’t.

PIRITHOUS

Sir,

I’ll follow you at heels. The feast’s solemnity

Shall want till your return.

THESEUS

Cousin, I charge you

Budge not from Athens. We shall be returning

Ere you can end this feast, of which, I pray you,

Make no abatement.—Once more, farewell all.

Exeunt Hippolyta, Emilia, Pirithous, and train towards the temple

FIRST QUEEN

Thus dost thou still make good the tongue o’th’ world.

SECOND QUEEN

And earn’st a deity equal with Mars—

THIRD QUEEN

If not above him, for Thou being but mortal mak’st affections bend

To godlike honours; they themselves, some say,

Groan under such a mast’ry.

THESEUS

As we are men,

Thus should we do; being sensually subdued

We lose our human title. Good cheer, ladies.

Now turn we towards your comforts.

⌈Flourish.⌉ Exeunt

1.2 Enter Palamon and Arcite

ARCITE

Dear Palamon, dearer in love than blood,

And our prime cousin, yet unhardened in

The crimes of nature, let us leave the city,

Thebes, and the temptings in’t, before we further

Sully our gloss of youth.

And here to keep in abstinence we shame

As in incontinence; for not to swim

I’th’ aid o’th’ current were almost to sink—

At least to frustrate striving; and to follow

The common stream ’twould bring us to an eddy

Where we should turn or drown; if labour through,

Our gain but life and weakness.

PALAMON

Your advice

Is cried up with example. What strange ruins

Since first we went to school may we perceive

Walking in Thebes? Scars and bare weeds

The gain o’th’ martialist who did propound

To his bold ends honour and golden ingots,

Which though he won, he had not; and now flirted

By peace for whom he fought. Who then shall offer

To Mars’s so-scorned altar? I do bleed

When such I meet, and wish great Juno would

Resume her ancient fit of jealousy

To get the soldier work, that peace might purge

For her repletion and retain anew

Her charitable heart, now hard and harsher

Than strife or war could be.

ARCITE

Are you not out?

Meet you no ruin but the soldier in

The cranks and turns of Thebes? You did begin

As if you met decays of many kinds.

Perceive you none that do arouse your pity

But th’unconsidered soldier?

PALAMON

Yes, I pity

Decays where’er I find them, but such most

That, sweating in an honourable toil,

Are paid with ice to cool ’em.

ARCITE

’Tis not this

I did begin to speak of. This is virtue,

Of no respect in Thebes. I spake of Thebes,

How dangerous, if we will keep our honours,

It is for our residing where every evil

Hath a good colour, where every seeming good’s

A certain evil, where not to be ev’n jump

As they are here were to be strangers, and

Such things to be, mere monsters.

PALAMON

’Tis in our power,

Unless we fear that apes can tutor’s, to

Be masters of our manners. What need I

Affect another’s gait, which is not catching

Where there is faith? Or to be fond upon

Another’s way of speech, when by mine own

I may be reasonably conceived—saved, too—

Speaking it truly? Why am I bound

By any generous bond to follow him

Follows his tailor, haply so long until

The followed make pursuit? Or let me know

Why mine own barber is unblest—with him

My poor chin, too—for ’tis not scissored just

To such a favourite’s glass? What canon is there

That does command my rapier from my hip

To dangle’t in my hand? Or to go tiptoe

Before the street be foul? Either I am

The fore-horse in the team or I am none

That draw i’th’ sequent trace. These poor slight

sores

Need not a plantain. That which rips my bosom

Almost to th’ heart’s—

ARCITE

Our uncle Creon.

PALAMON

He,

A most unbounded tyrant, whose successes

Makes heaven unfeared and villainy assured

Beyond its power there’s nothing; almost puts

Faith in a fever, and deifies alone

Voluble chance; who only attributes

The faculties of other instruments

To his own nerves and act; commands men’s service,

And what they win in’t, boot and glory; one

That fears not to do harm, good dares not. Let

The blood of mine that’s sib to him be sucked

From me with leeches. Let them break and fall

Off me with that corruption.

ARCITE

Clear-spirited cousin,

Let’s leave his court that we may nothing share

Of his loud infamy: for our milk

Will relish of the pasture, and we must

Be vile or disobedient; not his kinsmen

In blood unless in quality.

PALAMON

Nothing truer.

I think the echoes of his shames have deafed

The ears of heav’nly justice. Widows’ cries

Descend again into their throats and have not

Enter Valerius

Due audience of the gods—Valerius.

VALERIUS

The King calls for you; yet be leaden-footed

Till his great rage be off him. Phoebus, when

He broke his whipstock and exclaimed against

The horses of the sun, but whispered to

The loudness of his fury.

PALAMON

Small winds shake him.

But what’s the matter?

VALERIUS

Theseus, who where he threats, appals, hath sent

Deadly defiance to him and pronounces

Ruin to Thebes, who is at hand to seal

The promise of his wrath.

ARCITE

Let him approach.

But that we fear the gods in him, he brings not

A jot of terror to us. Yet what man

Thirds his own worth—the case is each of ours—

When that his action’s dregged with mind assured

’Tis bad he goes about.

PALAMON

Leave that unreasoned.

Our services stand now for Thebes, not Creon,

Yet to be neutral to him were dishonour,

Rebellious to oppose. Therefore we must

With him stand to the mercy of our fate,

Who hath bounded our last minute.

ARCITE

So we must.

Is’t said this war’s afoot? Or it shall be

On fail of some condition?

VALERIUS

’Tis in motion,

The intelligence of state came in the instant

With the defier.

PALAMON

Let’s to the King, who, were he A quarter carrier of that honour which

His enemy come in, the blood we venture

Should be as for our health, which were not spent,

Rather laid out for purchase. But, alas,

Our hands advanced before our hearts, what will

The fall o’th’ stroke do damage?

ARCITE

Let th’event—That never-erring arbitrator—tell us

When we know all ourselves, and let us follow

The becking of our chance.

Exeunt