Philip J. Finkelpearl, Wellesley College

The Two Noble Kinsmen, Shakespeare and Fletcher's adaptation of Chaucer's "The Knight's Tale," can be dated in 1613 with some precision.¹ The date is of some importance because several distinguished scholars have recently linked the play to the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and to other events of the same year.² Here, in an essay honoring the most rigorous biographer Shakespeare has ever had, I want to consider the precise sense in which The Two Noble Kinsmen can be related to topical matters.

This marriage of Elizabeth to Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, was central to the plans of the recently deceased Henry, Prince of Wales, for creating a Protestant alliance to curb the Catholic Habsburgs' power. For the marriage the prince had devised, according to Roy Strong, "a splendid series of spectacles, expressly designed to establish the Stuart court in the eyes...