How The Two Noble Kinsmen drew on The Canterbury Tales
A documented line of influence: William Shakespeare demonstrably engaged Geoffrey Chaucer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Canterbury Tales
Geoffrey Chaucer · c. 1400
MedievalThe influenced
The Two Noble Kinsmen
William Shakespeare · c. 1613
ShakespeareRelevance
9/10
On The Two Noble Kinsmen’s page
- This is Shakespeare's most direct and unquestionable use of a Chaucerian source — the plot is the Knight's Tale, dramatized
- The Prologue tips its hand: "Chaucer, of all admir'd, the story gives" — the play knows exactly whose shoulders it stands on
- Read the Knight's Tale first and you watch two writers, two centuries apart, hand the same story of rival cousins back and forth
On The Canterbury Tales’s page
- The single clearest case of Shakespeare reaching back to Chaucer — The Two Noble Kinsmen is a straight dramatization of the Knight's Tale
- Palamon and Arcite, two cousins who fall for the same woman from a prison window, walk out of Chaucer's tale and onto Shakespeare's stage
- The play's Prologue says so out loud, naming Chaucer and crediting him with the story