Her malice cannot hurt us. Set her free As she was born, saving from shame and sin. King. Set her at liberty. This is no place for such. But leave the court; You, Pharamond, Shall have free passage, and a conduct home Worthy so great a prince. When you come there, And not my purposed will. Pha. I do confess, Renowned sir. Enjoy, Philaster, King. Last, join your hands in one. By this to rule the passions of their blood; 240 250 [Curtain falls.1 1 Of Euphrasia, disguised as Bellario, Dyce says: "She is one of our authors' most perfect creations, — unequalled in the romantic tenderness and the deep devotedness of her affection by any character which at all resembles her in the wide range of fiction, from her supposed prototype, the Viola of Shakespeare, down to the Constance of Scott and the Kaled of Byron." stilted romantic conventions breaks haunds at moments a "sweet" play. S. IV. THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN. BY JOHN FLETCHER AND WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. Probably written between 1608 and 1612. The story is borrowed from The Knighte's Tale of Chaucer, who took it from Boccaccio's Teseide. SCENE: Athens and the neighbourhood; and in part of the first act, Thebes and the neighbourhood. PROLOGUE. Chaucer, of all admir'd, the story gives; There constant to eternity it lives. If we let fall the nobleness of this, And the first sound this child hear be a hiss, How will it shake the bones of that good man, 365 And make him cry from under ground, “O, fan From me the witless chaff of such a writer That blasts my bays, and my fam'd works makes lighter For, to say truth, it were an endless thing, And too ambitious, to aspire to him. Worth two hours' travail. To his bones sweet sleep! A little dull time from us, we perceive ΙΟ Our losses fall so thick, we needs must leave. [Flourish. 20 Enter HYMEN, with a torch burning; a Boy, in a white robe, before, singing and strewing flowers; after HYMEN, a Nymph, encompassed in her tresses, bearing a wheaten garland; then THESEUS, between two other Nymphs with wheaten chaplets on their heads; then HIPPOLYTA, the bride, led by PIRITHOUS, and another holding a garland over her head, her tresses likewise hanging; after her, EMILIA, holding up her train; ARTESIUS and Attendants. 1 The First Act is attributed to Shakespeare by most of the critics. |