Scene: Athens and the neighbourhood, except in part of the First Act, where it is Thebes and the neighbourhood.

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Prologue

New plays and maidenheads are near akin;
Much follow’d both, for both much money gi’en,
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’m 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 admir’d, 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 fam’d 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’ travel. 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.

Act I

Scene I

Athens. Before a temple.

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 spring-time’s harbinger
With her bells dim.
Oxlips in their cradles growing,
Marigolds on deathbeds blowing,
Larks’-heels trim.

All dear Nature’s children sweet,
Lie ’fore bride and bridegroom’s feet,
Blessing their sense! Strewing flowers.
Not an angel of the air,
Bird melodious, or bird fair,
Be absent hence!

The crow, the slanderous cuckoo, nor
The boding raven, nor chough hoar
Nor chatt’ring pie,
May on our bride-house perch or sing,
Or with them any discord bring,
But from it fly!

For pity’s sake and true gentility’s,
Hear, and respect me!

For your mother’s sake,
And as you wish your womb may thrive with fair ones,
Hear, and respect me!

Now, for the love of him whom Jove hath mark’d
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’ the book of trespasses
All you are set down there.

No knees to me:
What woman I may stead that is distress’d,
Does bind me to her.

We are three queens, whose sovereigns fell before
The wrath of cruel Creon; who endure
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 fear’d sword
That does good turns to the 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!

Pray you, kneel not:
I was transported with your speech, and suffer’d
Your knees to wrong themselves. I’ve 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 thrash’d nor blasted; Fortune at you
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 thaw’d. O, grief and time,
Fearful consumers, you will all devour!

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!

O, no knees, none, widow!
Unto the helmeted Bellona use them,
And pray for me, your soldier.—
Troubled I am. Turns away.

Honour’d Hippolyta,
Most dreaded Amazonian, that hast slain
The scythe-tusk’d 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 styl’d 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;
Who now, I know, hast much more power on him
Than e’er 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 pluck’d off;
Tell him, if he i’ the blood-siz’d field lay swoln,
Showing the sun his teeth, grinning at the moon,
What you would do!

Poor lady, say no more:
I had as lief trace this good action with you
As that whereto I’m going, and nev’r yet
Went I so willing, way. My lord is taken
Heart-deep with your distress: let him consider;
I’ll speak anon.

To Emilia. O, my petition was
Set down in ice, which, by hot grief uncandied,
Melts into drops; so sorrow, wanting form,
Is press’d with deeper matter.

Pray, stand up:
Your grief is written in your cheek.