Emilia (The Two Noble Kinsmen)
Play
Summary
The sister of Hippolyta and the unwitting prize of the competition between Palamon and Arcite. She is notable for her sincere indecision — she genuinely cannot choose between the two knights and protests throughout that she wishes neither had to die for her. Her attachment to the memory of her dead girlhood friend Flavina, invoked in the play's most lyrical passages, suggests a capacity for love that the arranged competition between two men she barely knows cannot touch. She represents the play's pathos: the beautiful object of a masculine contest that has nothing to do with her interiority.
Notable Quotations
"I am extinct, / Or human as the rest... / But they have gods — the gods who love them / Have given me this prize." *(V.iii)*
"True love 'twixt maid and maid may be / More than in sex dividual." *(I.iii)*
Cross-references
- The Two Noble Kinsmen — the play
- Romances (Late Plays)
- character_palamon — the kinsman who wins her
- character_arcite — the kinsman who dies for her
- character_theseus_2nk — who imposes the contest