Shakespeare Festival's "Two Noble Kinsmen'

At the heart of The Two Noble Kinsmen lies a story of a friendship between two men. Arcite and Palamon are cousins, but they exhibit the kind of deep love-hate relationship that I've often seen between brothers, including rivalry and the need for an occasional fistfight.

Or is something more going on here? Shakespeare produced this play in 1613 or 1614, shortly after the death of Robert Cecil, the Earl of Salisbury, who had a very close relationship with King James. And James was newly involved in an openly homosexual relationship with George Villiers, the Earl of Buckingham: In 1617 James went so far as to address the Privy Council with an official affirmation of his right to love men.

The characters in Kinsmen are portrayed as heterosexual, but the Bard may have chosen the story as a tribute to James, his patron and monarch.

Two Noble Kinsmen (co-authored with John Fletcher) may have been Shakespeare's last play, and it's rarely staged— it's the only Shakespeare play that's never been adapted for TV. So I was grateful for the opportunity to see it.

Lifted from Chaucer

The play lifts the plot from the 14th-Century romance, "The Knight's Tale," in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Theban knights Arcite and Palamon are devoted kinsmen, both serving their king, Creon, who is defeated by Theseus, Duke of Athens.

Theseus imprisons the two and, through the jail's window, they see Emilia, younger sister of Theseus's wife. Both fall in love with Emilia (attractively played by Laura Betz), even though she doesn't know they exist.

After Arcite is released and banished, and Palamon escapes from prison, they fight over who has the right to woo Emilia. Theseus stops their fisticuffs and tells Emilia, "They cannot both enjoy you."

Shakespeare faces death

The solution, Theseus decrees, is a tournament competition: The winner will get Emilia; the loser will be beheaded. Emilia tries to avert the tournament by choosing between Arcite and Palamon herself, only to find that she can't.

Arcite is a gallant young man, but the audience and Emilia tend to tilt in Palamon's direction because he's more endearing, with a dash of eccentricity. Director Aaron Cromie wisely cast the men as physically distinct: Chris Anthony, as Arcite, is dark and handsome; Dan McGlaughlin, as Palamon, is lighter haired, smiling and impish.

Palamon's soliloquy about death, with its ruminations about "the loathsome misery of age... the gout and rheum that... attend for grey approachers," seems autobiographical; it was Shakespeare's final play, and he died less than three years later.

Dubious logic

The play's denouement is arbitrary: Arcite wins the tournament but is thrown from his horse and dies, thus allowing Palamon and Emilia to wed. By coincidence, one of King James's favorites, his "confidential secretary" Robert Carr, was badly injured in a fall from a horse at a tournament attended by the king, who astonished onlookers by running onto the field and tenderly cradling Carr in his arms.

After Arcite dies, Theseus intones: "His part is play'd, and though it were too short, he did it well," which I take to be Shakespeare's eulogy for himself— one of the high points of this play. But then Theseus remarks that every benefit comes at a cost: Arcite has won the tournament, only to be killed, "So the deities have show'd due justice." This dubious logic is hardly Shakespeare at his sharpest.

Ophelia, padded

The subplots and supporting characters are similarly uneven. The jailer's daughter helps Palamon escape because she loves him, and the theme of a daughter falling in love with her father's prisoner recalls Miranda's love for Ferdinand in The Tempest. When Palamon fails to reciprocate her affection, she goes mad and carries on like Ophelia, but at much greater length. Portland Thomas is charming in this ungrateful role.

Theseus is suavely impersonated by Taylor Darden. Though he recites nice poetry, his is a vacillating figure. The play's weeping women and comic street-people are stock figures, even though the cast members strive mightily to give them life.

Cromie staged the play with no frills, virtually no scenery and clothing of modern Athens. Clever pantomime indicated the guys peering out of their prison window. As we've come to expect whenever the Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival is involved, the fighting and swordplay were spectacular.