The Two Noble Kinsmen

Three queens come to plead with Theseus and Hippolyta, rulers of Athens, to avenge the deaths of their husbands by the hand of the tyrant Creon of Thebes.

In Thebes, Palamon and Arcite, cousins and close friends, are bound by duty to fight for Creon, though they are appalled by his tyranny.

The two argue, but Arcite offers to bring Palamon food, drink and armaments so that they can meet in an equal fight over Emilia.

Each prayer is granted: Arcite wins the combat but is then thrown from his horse and dies, leaving Palamon to wed Emilia.

Before the composition of The Two Noble Kinsmen, Chaucer's "Knight's Tale"—itself based on Giovanni Boccaccio's Teseida—had been adapted for the stage twice before, although both versions are now lost.

Philip Henslowe commissioned the play, which may have influenced Shakespeare's own A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is usually considered to have been written around this time.

[2] The comic sub-plot involving the jailer's daughter has no direct source, but is similar to scenes in The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn (1613), by Francis Beaumont, from which the performance by the yokels is derived.

In Jonson's work, a passage in Act IV, scene iii, appears to indicate that Kinsmen was known and familiar to audiences at that time.

In Francis Beaumont's The Masque of the Inner Temple and Gray's Inn (1613), the second anti-masque features this cast of rural characters: pedant, May Lord and Lady, servingman and chambermaid, tavern host and hostess, shepherd and his wench, and two "bavians" (male and female baboon).

[4]: 53–54, 306 The play was entered into the Stationers' Register on 8 April 1634; the quarto was published later that year by the bookseller John Waterson, printed by Thomas Cotes.

[4]: 507 In September 2020, media reported that early seventeenth-century editions of several English plays, including a 1634 Two Noble Kinsmen had been discovered by John Stone of the University of Barcelona at the Royal Scots College's library in Salamanca, Spain.

[5] The inclusion of The Two Noble Kinsmen in one of these two volumes makes it perhaps the oldest copy of any of Shakespeare's works in the country and the first to circulate in the Spanish-speaking world.

In 1664, after theatres had re-opened after Charles II returned to the throne at the beginning of the English Restoration period, Sir William Davenant produced an adaptation of The Two Noble Kinsmen for the Duke's Company titled The Rivals.

[14] The production, directed by Will Block, re-purposed the Morris Dance as a hallucination featuring major characters from the Jailer's Daughter's life.