The major productions since 1997 have been those of Tim Carroll at Shakespeare’s Globe (2000), the three by Darko Tresnjak – at the Public Theatre in New York (2003), the Old Globe in San Diego (2004), and the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (2006) – the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, with those by Alexandru Tocilescu at the National Theatre of Romania (2007) and Ivan Rajmont at the National Theatre, Prague (2008). There have also been a number of small-scale productions by fringe companies. The play’s collaborative status seems to license very free adaptation even by those who claim to admire it (see Panjwani, who feels that it still suffers from a prejudice against collaborations). Darko Tresnjak, in his three major productions, felt that ‘discrepancies between Fletcher and Shakespeare’ justified him in making major changes to the story. Thus, whereas the Doctor prescribes sex as part of his cure of the Daughter’s madness, Tresnjak explains her madness by having her raped by masked revelers (Karam).

  The play’s lack of any role that might appeal to a star actor may be explained by Andrew J. Power’s theory that Shakespeare’s ageing company was trying to move away from its over-dependence on Burbage and make room for younger players. Whatever the cause, it is probably one reason why the play is not revived more often. What it does have, of course, are ‘two of the best girls’ parts from that period’. This is how Imogen Stubbs described Emilia and the Jailer’s Daughter, after having had great success as the latter in Barry Kyle’s 1986 production (Mulryne & Shewring, 109). Kyle’s production has influenced some critical thinking – Lorraine Helms and Katrine Wong, for example, show how Stubbs’ ‘athletic’ performance as the Daughter affected their response to the play – and the evidence of reviews suggests that audiences are often surprised by how interesting the female characters are. Ivan Rajmont, the director of the first Czech production of the first Czech translation of the play (by Martin Hilský), was sympathetic to Emilia and the Jailer’s Daughter. In a particularly touching moment, Emilia spoke her soliloquy over the kinsmen’s portraits (4.2) while sitting beside the well-tended grave of Flavina. On the other hand, Rajmont said that his actors kept asking in rehearsal whether the play was supposed to be a comedy, and his interpretation frequently undercut the supposed nobility of the two kinsmen; his treatment of Arcite’s death was almost farcical. When the tone of a play is difficult to gauge, the easiest response is to treat it as comic throughout. Bessell’s account of the Shakespeare’s Globe production in rehearsal shows the same uncertainty about possible audience reaction, and the director recalled that in early performances ‘There were various lines that got hoots of laughter which had never struck us as funny before’ (Bessell, Interviews, 19–20); after initially being delighted with the response, the actors found it difficult to establish a more flexible attitude.

  The play’s rarity has itself become a selling point. With various Shakespeare anniversaries approaching, some companies offered it as a special ‘first’, and their contribution to the occasion. For example, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival, which performed it in May 2014, emphasized the company’s ‘quest to Complete the Canon’ and asked audience members to stand if they too were completing their own canon by attending the production. For many, then, this was not only their first performance of the play but also the last on their list of Shakespeare’s plays to be seen.

  LAST WORDS

  The fact that The Two Noble Kinsmen is finally being recognized as Shakespeare’s last play, and therefore the last chapter of his literary biography, may be what most catches the imagination of today’s readers and spectators. As Gordon McMullan has shown, the ‘idea of late writing’ has a powerful effect. It has, for example, encouraged a reinterpretation of something usually seen as a flaw, the numerous reminiscences of earlier Shakespeare plays. Julia Briggs and Misha Teramura argue that these have a purpose: for Briggs, the play ‘gathers up many earlier themes and motifs, reworking them in distinctly somber colours’ (226). Teramura suggests that Fletcher was creating ‘an anthology of Shakespearean moments, performing his own protean acts of appropriation and parody’ (576).

  The advance publicity for the 2000 production at Shakespeare’s Globe made a point of the fact that the play contained ‘perhaps the last words Shakespeare ever wrote for the theatre’ (http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/education/discovery-space/previous-productions/two-noble-kinsmen) and a number of other theatres have advertised it in much the same way. Yet these ‘last words’ are spoken by Theseus, and critics who see him as a tyrant find it impossible to take the speech in anything but an ironic sense. Julia Briggs sees it as ‘helpless and uncomprehending submission’, virtually denying the existence of a benevolent providence (227); Helen Cooper calls it a ‘complacent summing up’ that ‘does not so much attempt to find a way through the metaphysical maze as deny that it exists’ (‘Jacobean’, 204). In performance, too, Theseus can be undercut either by a deliberately unsympathetic performance or by constant emphasis on the discrepancy between his words and events; at Ashland in 1994, his ‘Let’s go off’ was an uneasy reaction to the sight of the Jailer’s Daughter rushing onto the stage, still incurably insane.

  But other readings are possible. The psychiatrist Eugene J. Mahon takes Theseus’ words, especially his admission that we ‘still / Are children in some kind’ (5.4.133–4), as evidence that the duke has learned something in the course of the play: there are things he cannot control, and maturity may have ‘an element of childhood in it’ (406). Christopher Cobb questions what ‘bear us like the time’ might mean. When Edmund in King Lear tells a captain that ‘men / Are as the time is’ his intention is to kill pity in the man who will be ordered to kill Lear and Cordelia. By contrast, in this passage Theseus ‘calls on his listeners to keep themselves open to joy and sorrow at each moment, giving each person and feeling its due, however long that due may last . . . If there is a rebirth punningly hidden in this bearing, it is notable that it is communal, something that Theseus proposes that we do together’ (237–8). Harold Bloom finds the speech more comforting than any other concluding speech in Shakespeare, and, in a memorable phrase, detaches it from any personal feelings about its speaker: ‘Theseus seems to have vanished and Shakespeare himself says goodbye to us forever’ (713). Jonathan Bate also writes eloquently of the mingled tragic and comic tone of ‘Shakespeare’s last stage words, binding the infinite space of his imaginative world in a nutshell’ (Soul, 426). If readers and audiences think of the play’s ending as a direct address from Shakespeare, they may eventually come to regard it with the same reverence as Prospero’s ‘Our revels now are ended’ and ‘Now my charms are all o’erthrown’. Such is the power of anything that seems to give a glimpse of the personal feelings of the play’s co-author, some three years before his death. This may not be the best of reasons for future theatrical revivals, but they will be welcome nevertheless.

  THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN

  LIST OF ROLES

  Speaker of the PROLOGUE

  BOY singer in the wedding procession

  HYMEN

  Nymphs figures in the wedding procession

  " "

  ATHENIANS

  THESEUS Duke of Athens

  PIRITHOUS friend of Theseus

  HIPPOLYTA bride of Theseus, an Amazon

  EMILIA sister of Hippolyta

  OFFICER (Artesius)

  HERALD officer of Theseus

  WAITING WOMAN

  JAILER to Emilia

  DAUGHTER to Jailer

  WOOER to Jailer’s Daughter

  BROTHER to Jailer

  TWO FRIENDS of Jailer

  DOCTOR

  MAID companion to Jailer’s Daughter

  SCHOOLMASTER (Gerald)

  FIVE COUNTRYMEN (among them Arcas, Rycas, Sennois)

  TABORER (Timothy)

  Actor playing BAVIAN

  FIVE COUNTRYWOMEN Barbary, Friz, Luce, Maudlin, Nell

  GENTLEMEN

  EXECUTIONER

  TWO MESSENGERS

  THEBANS

  THREE QUEENS widows of besiegers of Thebes

  ARCITE

  PALAMON Cousins, nephews to Creon, King of Thebes

  " "

  VALERIUS

  THREE KNIGHTS supporters of Arcite

  THREE KNIGHTS supporters of Palamon

  Speaker of the EPILOGUE

  Servants, Guards, Attendants, etc.

  LIST OF ROLES Not in Q. A perfunctory and inaccurate list is supplied in F and a different, equally inaccurate, one in the 1711 edition. For suggestions as to the original casting. Doubling (though impossible to identify precisely) would have been easy. Many of the main-plot characters never meet those in the subplot; many, such as the Three Queens, the Schoolmaster and the Doctor, make only cameo appearances; and others may have been used only as dancers.

  1 Speaker of the PROLOGUE Although the Prologue is immediately followed by a procession that probably required the entire cast, the speaker could have been any one of the actors, with his Act 1 costume concealed beneath the long black cloak which was traditionally worn by the ‘Prologue’ (see Induction to Jonson, Cynthia’s Revels). He is uncharacterized, except as an actor. The audience was apparently expected to recognize him as a spokesman for the company. The reference to weakness (24) might indicate a boy actor; on the other hand, if Gerald spoke the lines there would be an interesting play-within-a-play effect at his reappearance as Prologue in 3.5.99 (RA). He may carry a book, representing the works of Chaucer.

  2 BOY This might have been a professional singer or a member of the cast, perhaps the same boy who played the Jailer’s Daughter.

  3 HYMEN not the god of marriage himself, but (as in AYL 5.4.107) an actor; he wears a yellow robe and carries a torch with which to light the nuptial fire.

  4 Nymphs young women dressed like the local deities of woods and streams, with flowing robes, long hair and flower garlands or wheaten wreaths

  5 THESEUS The earliest and most legendary of the heroes in Plutarch’s Lives, which is the main source for his character. His legend often overlaps with that of his supposed kinsman Hercules. Plutarch’s explanation is that Theseus admired and imitated Hercules (Plutarch, 34–5) and the dramatists retain this characteristic. The play omits the less savoury aspects of his legend, but his adventures in the Cretan labyrinth, his abandonment of Ariadne, his promiscuity and his descent to the underworld are referred to indirectly. He has the fourth-largest part, 326 lines.

  6 PIRITHOUS Best known as a famous classical example of friendship. As Proudfoot has pointed out, the variant spellings of his name are one of the clearest indicators of dual authorship. In 1.1 he is Pirithous in the SP and addressed twice as Pyrithous; in 1.3 he is referred to in dialogue as Pirithous and Pirothous (possibly a misprint, but possibly a recollection of the Chaucerian spelling Perotheus). His name evidently has three syllables, stressed on the first (see 1.1.219). In 2.2, though the name continues to be spelled Pirithous, scansion requires it to be a four-syllable word, stressed on the second syllable. In 2.4 the SPs give his name in both forms and it continues to have four syllables; in 3.5 he is abbreviated in SPs as both Pir. (once) and Per. (four times); in 3.6, 4.1, 4.2 and 5.1 he is consistently Perithous (or abbreviated to Per.); in 5.3 he is Perithous in two SDs (probably added by the book-keeper) and in the first SP, but the spelling in the rest of the play reverts to Pirithous (since his name is not spoken in these scenes, there is no evidence of its pronunciation). In other ways too, he seems to have given the dramatists trouble. His thematic importance, as an example of friendship that reinforces rather than conflicts with married love, is not reflected in the size of his part, though he is entrusted with two very difficult speeches (4.2.91–116 and 5.4.48–85). The roles of Helicanus and Escanes in Pericles are similarly undeveloped.

  7 HIPPOLYTA The Amazonian queen whom Theseus married after conquering her in battle, also called Antiope (though the latter is named as a separate person in MND 2.1.80). See duBois (38–9) for other versions of her legend. Amazons are traditionally associated with lust (Shepherd, 271); hence, the name is sometimes given to lascivious women, as in Fletcher’s The Custom of the Country (c.1620) and Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore (c.1629); the Hippolita who appears in Fletcher and Massinger’s Sea Voyage (1622) tells her fellow Amazons that she ‘was not made / For this single life’ (Bowers, 9: 2.2.34–5). Nothing in the play indicates whether Hippolyta and Emilia are dressed like Amazons, with buskins, skirts looped up and bows and arrows. Amazons were said to cut off one breast to make it easier to shoot their arrows; boy actors could have achieved this effect, but it is unlikely that they did.

  8 EMILIA A character invented by Boccaccio. Chaucer anglicized her name to Emily but the play uses both forms, depending on the needs of the metre. Spelled both ‘Emilia’ and ‘Aemilia’, the name occurs elsewhere in Shakespeare (CE, Oth, WT). Hers is the third-largest part in the play, 368 lines.

  9 OFFICER (Artesius) A non-speaking character, not listed in the initial Q SD for 1.1, who comes into existence only when Theseus addresses him at 1.1.159 (as ‘Artesuis’, presumably a transposition or misreading of the MS). There are many possible sources for his name; its female form, Artesia, occurs in Sidney’s Arcadia. He is addressed by it only because Theseus at this point is trying unsuccessfully to convince the three queens that he is deputizing a trusted officer on their service. He may have been played by one of the two small-part actors named in the SD at the beginning of 5.1; they were probably present whenever the play calls for officers or attendants.

  11 WAITING WOMAN Her appearance is called for only in 2.2, but in most productions she is present in all court scenes and becomes the ‘servant’ in 5.3.

  12 JAILER He is called Jailer in 2.1 (spelled both Jayler and Jaylor) but in Q he becomes Keeper in 2.2, both in the dialogue and in SPs. His daughter also refers to him as ‘the mean keeper of [Palamon’s] prison’ (2.4.3), though this is less significant, as the words were interchangeable. When he reappears in 4.1 he is Jailer, and so to the end of the play. He may be ‘mean’ only in comparison to a prince, since the keeper of a state prison like the Tower of London would normally be a knight.

  13 DAUGHTER The absence of proper names for this character, her father, her suitor and the other characters in this part of the plot is not unusual. Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, for instance, has no other name and the names of many Shakespeare characters are known through their speech prefixes rather than from the dialogue. The Daughter is named in all later adaptations. She has 324 lines, nearly as many as Theseus.

  14 WOOER If this part was taken by a young actor, as 4.3.76 indicates, he might have doubled one of the female roles, or any of the court party, since he never appears in scenes with them. In some productions, he becomes one of the countrymen in 2.3 and 2.5, though his presence, with the Daughter, in the morris of 3.5 would be incompatible with his account in 4.1. The fact that he has no lines in 4.1 after the entrance of the Daughter, though some intervention from him could be very affecting, suggests that he may have needed to exit to play one of the messengers in 4.2.

  16 TWO FRIENDS of the Jailer. Like the Jailer’s BROTHER, they speak only in 4.1. To judge from 4.1.1–31, they are attendants on Theseus and should be present in 3.6 to hear the debate they describe later.

  17 DOCTOR A change in authorship has sometimes been detected in the transition from the pompous but sympathetic, prose-speaking Doctor of 4.3 to the cynical, even misogynistic, verse-speaker of 5.2. However, many actors have used the discrepancies to create an effectively varied portrait. Moreover, the mainly sympathetic Scottish doctor in Macbeth is also surprisingly cynical in his final lines (5.3.61–2).

  18 MAID It has been argued that this is a ‘ghost’ character, but see n. to 5.2.39 SD.

  19 SCHOOLMASTER (Gerald) a typical stage pedant who owes something to Rhombus in Sidney’s Lady of May (1578–9) and Holofernes in LLL (c.1595). It is not clear whether he is meant to be identical with Giraldo, Emilia’s Schoolmaster, mentioned by the Daughter in 4.3.13. See Appendix 4.

  20 FIVE COUNTRYMEN Four countrymen appear in 2.3; three others (Arcas, Sennois and Rycas) are said to be planning to join the maying, and Rycas at least is present in 3.5. There may, then, be as many as seven countrymen in all, though one may be identical with Timothy the Taborer and another with the Bavian. It is also possible that the countrymen in 2.3 are not speaking about offstage friends, but referring explicitly to one another. In any case, there are clearly meant to be six male dancers in 3.5, since the absence of a sixth woman creates a gap in the planned performance. I am assuming that the Bavian would pair off with a woman dancer but that the Taborer would not. Arcas, in Statius’s Thebaid, is a contender in the funeral games; the name (also spelled Archas) occurs frequently in works with a classical setting and even in Fletcher’s Loyal Subject (1618), which is set in Russia. Arcas is also another name for Mercury; Thompson (Chaucer, 185) points out that Mercury appears to Arcite at the same point in The Knight’s Tale (KT) where Fletcher introduces the countrymen. The names Rycas and Sennois have no obvious origins. Rycas looks like a coinage formed on the same principle as Arcas; Sennois (the current form for ‘Sienese’ – see AW 1.2.1) may be a misreading of Sennius (as with Artesius, above) or of one of the other classical names that the authors could have found in Plutarch: Simois, the river flowing by Troy; Sinnis, a murderer killed by the young Theseus (Plutarch, 36); or Solois, who loved the Amazon Antiope and committed suicide for her sake (Plutarch, 55–6).

  21 TABORER (Timothy) Perhaps a generic name for someone who played the pipe and drum in popular entertainments; the piper who appears with the morris dancers in the anonymous Jack Drum’s Entertainment (1600) is called Timothy Tweedle (RP). The part may have been taken by a theatre musician; Ingram (80) points out that Fletcher sometimes incorporates them into his plays. As Laroque (132) notes, the fife and drum are sexual symbols and the player may have made obscene gestures with these instruments. See Figure 20, second from left.