Theseus (The Two Noble Kinsmen)

Play

The Two Noble Kinsmen

Summary

The Duke of Athens and the play's presiding authority — a figure of heroic order drawn from Chaucer's Knight's Tale and A Midsummer Night's Dream. He establishes the chivalric framework of the contest, pronounces the rules, and delivers the play's final resigned meditation on the inscrutability of the gods when Arcite dies winning what he won. His authority is genuine but the play's ending calls it into question: his ordered competition produces an outcome that pleases no one fully.

Notable Quotations

"O you heavenly charmers, / What things you make of us! For what we lack / We laugh; for what we have are sorry; still / Are children in some kind." *(V.iv)*

Cross-references

• The Two Noble Kinsmen — the play
• Romances (Late Plays)
• character_palamon — one of the knights he judges
• character_arcite — the other knight he judges
• character_emilia_2nk — his sister-in-law who is the prize
• character_pirithous — his loyal companion