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Updated: June 27, 2025
They spoke to Theseus about him, and said that he deserved to have a higher place that he might show his goodness and courage in knightly deeds. To please them, Theseus made him one of his own squires. Seven years passed away, and Palamon was still in prison. This year, however, in the May-time, a friend of his, who heard where he was, helped him to escape.
The influence of Chaucer upon the dramatists of the Elizabethan age was probably rather indirect and general than direct and personal; but indications or illustrations of it may be traced in a considerable number of these writers, including perhaps among the earliest Richard Edwards as the author of a non-extant tragedy, "Palamon and Arcite," and among the latest the author or authors of "The Two Noble Kinsmen."
and what is still more speaking, he wrote at once the Athalie, "la chef d'oeuvre de la poésie française," in the judgment of the French critics, to be rendered by the some young tyros. When, in 1556, in Christ Church Hall, Palamon and Arcite was finished, outspoken Queen Bess, with her frank eyes full of pleasure, declared "that Palamon must have been in love indeed.
Also I will bring armor and weapons for thee and me, and thou shalt choose of them what thou wilt, ere I arm myself! Food and drink will I bring to thee this night into the grove. If so be that thou slay me here to-morrow, then indeed thou mayest win thy lady if thou canst!" Then Palamon answered, "Let it be so." Next morning Arcite rode to the wood alone.
When he joined her, she pointed to the dungeon window, and told him of the day when she had looked at the prison in the morning mist, and murmured to herself the names of the captive princes, "Palamon and Arcite, Palamon and Arcite."
Palamon was so angry when he heard this, that he forgot his own danger. He started out from his hiding-place and faced Arcite. "False Arcite," he cried, "now art thou caught indeed! Thou hast deceived Duke Theseus and hast falsely changed thy name, hast thou? Then surely I or thou must die. I will suffer no man to love my lady, save myself alone. For I am Palamon, thy mortal foe.
Chaucer makes Arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had alter'd his character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and resigns Emilia to Palamon. What would Ovid have done on this occasion? He would certainly have made Arcite witty on his deathbed.
When they were ready they fenced together for a little, and then the real fight began. So fierce was it that the men seemed like wild animals in their rage. Palamon sprang at Arcite like a strong lion, and Arcite glanced aside and darted at him again like a cruel tiger. In the midst of this they heard a sound of the galloping of horses that brought the royal hunters to the spot.
But his indirect debt in all that concerns elegant handling of material, and in the fusion of the romantic with the classic spirit, which forms the chief charm of such tales as the Palamon and Arcite, can hardly be exaggerated.
Only in the sunnier distance beyond, where the sunset of Shakespeare's imagination seems to melt or flow back into the sunrise, do we discern Prospero beside Miranda, Florizel by Perdita, Palamon with Arcite, the same knightly and kindly Duke Theseus as of old; and above them all, and all others of his divine and human children, the crowning and final and ineffable figure of Imogen.
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