The world of The Two Noble Kinsmen is one in which women are left without much choice. In the main plot line, two cousins and best friends, Arcite and Palamon, become enemies when they both fall in love with Emilia, Theseus’s sister-in-law. To stop them from fighting, Theseus tells Emilia to pick one to marry. When she refuses, he decrees that whichever of the two can win a contest of strength shall have Emilia as his prize. The fact that Emilia loves neither man doesn’t matter.
Emilia has not been treated kindly by male critics. In 1908, Tucker Brooke agreed with F.J. Furnivall’s unfavorable comparison of her to “a silly lady’s maid or shop girl, not knowing her own mind, up and down like a bucket in a well.” But I think any woman reading the play today recognizes that the problem isn’t that Emilia doesn’t know her own mind, it’s that Theseus doesn’t consider her mind important in solving the issue.
Such a situation is one that women today know all too well. Recently a video about catcalling, produced by Hollaback!, has gone viral, bringing attention to the harassment women face on a daily basis. Everyone I know who posted the video on Facebook had a man write comment after comment explaining to them why women shouldn’t be offended, why women shouldn’t be afraid, why women were overreacting. Multiple women chimed in to explain why such behavior was offensive and how it made them feel unsafe. Despite this, these particular men point-blank refused to reconsider their actions. One man said, “I will continue to say hello to pretty ladies that walk by me on the street.” Another remarked, “I will keep asking you to smile because your sadness will inevitably lead to someone else’s.” Our own minds didn’t matter.
At the end of The Two Noble Kinsmen, Theseus explains the action of the play by stating “Never Fortune / Did play a subtler game.” For him, the gods have fairly and justly brought about the troubling results of the plot. In this play, as in life, we may find Theseus’s summation unsatisfying.