SOURCE: “The Collapse of Shakespeare's High Style in The Two Noble Kinsmen,” in English Studies in Canada, Vol. XIII, No. 4, December, 1987, pp. 375-90.

In the following essay, Magnusson examines the language and style of the eloquent first and last scenes of The Two Noble Kinsmen. In both scenes Magnusson finds that Shakespeare's stylistic ornamentation is designed to conceal a dearth of substance.

The ornate eloquence of Shakespeare's share in The Two Noble Kinsmen has often drawn tributes to a play that has not recommended itself to directors:¹

The first and last acts … of the Two Noble Kinsmen, which, in point of composition, is perhaps the most superb work in the language, and beyond all doubt from the loom of Shakspeare, would have been the most gorgeous rhetoric, had they not happened to be something far better. The supplications of the widowed Queens to Theseus, the invocations of their...