—Prolog, lines 18-21
That great folk hero, Robin Hood, was known to the English public through a series of popular ballads which first appear (as far as modern knowledge is concerned) in Chaucer's lifetime. These ballads were enormously popular but as serious poetry were quite insignificant. They were analogous, in a way, to our own enormously popular but literarily insignificant TV westerns.
The play opens with a scene which is thought to be Shakespearean.
Hymen enters. He is the Greek god of marriage, and is a mere personification concerning whom there are no well-known myths. Following Hymen are a variety of nymphs and then a wedding party-a groom, a bride, the groom's friend, the bride's sister. Everything is joyous and springlike and the first words of the play are a song about early flowers:
—Act I, scene i, lines 7-8
"Ver" is an obsolete term for spring, from the French vert (meaning "green"-from which such words as "verdure" and "verdant" are also derived).
The marriage that is being so celebrated is between none other than Theseus and Hippolyta, the same couple who were being married at the start of A Midsummer Night's Dream (see page I-18). In fact, some critics suggest that Shakespeare used Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" as the original inspiration of A Midsummer Night's Dream, borrowing the marriage as the frame and then filling it with his own subplots. Here in The Two Noble Kinsmen he follows Chaucer in the subplot as well.
In The Two Noble Kinsmen, Theseus is supplied with a friend, Pirithous, who was lacking in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Pirithous is an authentic mythological character. It was at his marriage that a famous battle with centaurs took place (see page I-46).
The best-known myth concerning Theseus and Pirithous deals with an occasion when the latter decided to gain for himself the hand of none other than Proserpina, queen of the underworld (see page I-15). Theseus loyally offered to help and the two invaded Hades. There both were magically imprisoned in chairs from which they could not rise, and it seemed, in punishment for their presumption, that this situation would last eternally. Hercules, however, eventually rescued them. According to some versions, he rescued only Theseus and left Pirithous forever imprisoned in Hades.
Hippolyta in this play is given a sister whom she did not have in A Midsummer Night's Dream. This is Emilia, a character who does not belong to classical myth at all, but to medieval fiction. She is to be the heroine of this play, the puppet about whom will circle the mummery of courtly love.
Before the marriage can take place, however, three queens enter. Each kneels, pleading, before a separate member of the wedding party, and a stately back-and-forth begins. The First Queen (given no other name in the play) falls at the feet of Theseus, and says:
—Act I, scene i, lines 39-44
It was in Thebes that the famous legend of Oedipus was set. Oedipus, who had been cast away as an infant and had been brought up far away from Thebes, did not know he was the son of the Theban King and Queen. Visiting Thebes, he unknowingly killed the King and married the Queen-killing his father and marrying his mother, whence we get the expression "Oedipus complex." By his own mother Oedipus had two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, and two daughters, Ismene and Antigone.
After the truth of the matter came out, Oedipus blinded himself and went into voluntary exile, while his mother-wife, Jocasta, committed suicide.
Jocasta's younger brother, Creon, became effective ruler of Thebes. Creon supported Eteocles, Oedipus' elder son, for the succession. Polyneices, the younger son, went into exile and talked certain leaders of the city of Argos, sixty miles southwest of Thebes, into leading an army against his city.
Five Argjve leaders took up the struggle. With them was not only Polyneices, but also Tydeus, who was a refugee in Argos because he had fled his home town after accidentally killing his brother. Tydeus was the father of Diomedes, who was to be an important Greek warrior at the siege of Troy and an important character in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (see page I-79).
The tale of the expedition of these leaders against Thebes is usually called "The Seven Against Thebes," though in The Two Noble Kinsmen the number is reduced to three.
The seven were defeated, and Creon remained master of the field. As a punishment for the aggressors (and particularly for Polyneices, who had warred against his own city-an act of treason for which no personal wrongs were deemed sufficient excuse), Creon ordered the fallen warriors on the Argive side to remain in the field unburied, a prey to carrion birds and beasts.
This was a terrible fate for Greeks, who felt that until a dead body had been burned with appropriate rites, its shade must wander restlessly about the border of Hades. In fact, it was held impious of Creon to dictate such a fate, since it was wrong to inflict it even on hated enemies.
The Greek playwright Sophocles wrote one of the greatest of the surviving Greek dramas on this subject. Entitled Antigone, it dealt with Oedipus' younger daughter, who felt that the religious obligation to bury her fallen brother, Polyneices, transcended all other considerations. She accomplishes the deed even though it means her own death.
The three queens apparently have attempted to do Antigone's deed but have failed, and now they have come to ask Theseus to invade Thebes, punish Creon, and see to it that the fallen warriors are duly burned.
Theseus is sympathetic to the appeal, for he has met the First Queen before. He says:
—Act I, scene i, lines 59-61
Capaneus was one of the seven against Thebes and his death was dramatic. He had placed a ladder against Thebes's wall and, climbing it, boasted that not even Jupiter (Zeus) could keep him out of the city now. Promptly, he was struck by a lightning bolt and killed. He had a son, named Sthenelus, who was to be at the siege of Troy as companion and friend of Diomedes. Sthenelus appears in the Iliad but not in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.
Capaneus' wife was named Evadne, and presumably it is she who is the First Queen.
On the occasion of the marriage of Capaneus and Evadne, Theseus met the bride as well and found her beautiful. Nor was he the only one. Theseus says:
—Act I, scene i, lines 66-69