"He was not of an age, but for all time." So wrote Ben Jonson in his dedicatory verses to the memory of William Shakespeare in 1623, and so we continue to affirm today. No other writer, in English or in any other language, can rival the appeal that Shake...

"He was not of an age, but for all time." So wrote Ben Jonson in his dedicatory verses to the memory of William Shakespeare in 1623, and so we continue to affirm today. No other writer, in English or in any other language, can rival the appeal that Shake...

William Shakespeare's reputation is based primarily on his plays. With the partial exception of the Sonnets (1609), quarried since the early nineteenth century for autobiographical secrets allegedly encoded in them, the nondramatic writings have traditio...

In the following essay, Thompson compares The Two Noble Kinsmen, scene by scene, with its source, Chaucer 's The Knight's Tale, arguing that Shakespeare and Fletcher adapted Chaucer's tale in significantly different ways. Thompson goes on to suggest possible reasons why the two playwrights used the source material in the ways they did.

In the essay that follows, Underwood analyzes the role of the Jailer's Daughter in The Two Noble Kinsmen and studies the significance of the subplot in relation to the main plot. Focusing on the sexual overtones of the subplot, Underwood maintains that through the Jailer's Daughter and her relationship with Palamon, the playwrights emphasize the play's theme of the interchangeability of wooers to the wooed.

In the following essay, Hedrick contends that The Two Noble Kinsmen's thematic exploration of the nature of artistic rivalry suggests that Shakespeare did not collaborate in the writing of the play. Hedrick focuses on the play's treatment of the subject of collaboration, and on the relationship between cooperation and competition explored in the play.