Where He Called Dibs On the Princess

The Two Noble Kinsmen: William Shakespeare (Drama, Plays, Comedy) [Annotated] by William Shakespeare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Attributed to--and correctly so, as far as I know--Shakespeare and John Fletcher.

I found this pretty entertaining. It's more straightforward than some Shakespeare plays, having just one main plot and a minor secondary plot. Well, sorta two, I guess. This makes it more comprehensible on the first read than many of his plays. Besides, the original story comes from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, so there's a good chance you already kind of know the plot.

Set in Thebes and Athens, if Thebes and Athens were in East Anglia or something, it's the story of a pair or noble cousins who fall in love with the same woman who they just happened to see at a distance at almost the same moment, and it comes between them. There are a lot of hurdles between them and Emilia, as they are stuck in jail and she's the daughter of the king. But yadda yadda yadda they both end up free and, at the command of Athens' king, must do battle, with the loser dying and the winner marrying his daughter. The sweet young woman likes them both and wants nothing to do with a duel, but she has no say.

In many ways, this is a sad story, with many tragic elements. It starts with a war against a cruel king who would not allow widowed queens to bury their husbands, and it ends with a life-and-death battle between good friends. Lots of death and grief and separation. But it ends happily enough, which is a saving grace for me.

I think this would be fun to see. I'm curious about the parts with the jailer's daughter who goes crazy for love of Palamon but is cured by sleeping with her lover playing at being him. This could be poignant and touching or it could be played for laughs; I'm not sure how it would come off.

Supposedly, the easier sections were written by Fletcher, and the parts with denser language were Shakespeare's. I dunno. It all seemed like one thing to me. I liked it fine.

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