SOURCE: Mallette, Richard. “Same-Sex Erotic Friendship in The Two Noble Kinsmen.” Renaissance Drama n.s. 26 (1995): 29-52.

In the following essay, Mallette claims that The Two Noble Kinsmen contains two sets of homosocial friendship bonds—those of Arcite/Palamon and Emilia/Flavina. The critic contends that these bonds are destroyed over the course of the drama without being satisfactorily redeemed by the “superficially happy marriage” that closes the play.

At the end of The Two Noble Kinsmen, having vanquished his cousin and friend Arcite in chivalric contest for the hand of Emilia, Palamon belatedly grasps the irony of his triumph:

                                                                                                                                            O cousin, That we should things desire which do cost us The loss of our desire! that nought could buy Dear love but loss of dear love! 

(5.4.109-12)

Palamon's bitter sense of the price of victory goes to the heart of the play's dilemma. The Two Noble Kinsmen makes...