The two noble kinsmen

The king of Thebes is a tyrant but his young relatives, Palamon and Arcite, defend him anyway.

The two noble kinsmen find their loyalty rewarded with imprisonment when they end up on the losing side of a battle with the great hero, Theseus of Athens.

From the window of their jail they observe Emilia, the sister-in-law of their conqueror, whose stunning beauty shatters their vow of eternal brotherhood.

Now the former friends must find a way to evade their captors and pursue the alluring princess, an undertaking that will conclude with a fight to the death.First published in 1634, this Jacobean tragicomedy features a plot derived from "The Knight's Tale" in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.

The play was originally attributed to both John Fletcher and William Shakespeare; its association with the latter is a longstanding source of controversy that is now generally accepted by scholarly consensus.