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  • Title: Two Noble Kinsmen (Quarto, 1634)

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    Author: William Shakespeare
    Not Peer Reviewed

    Two Noble Kinsmen (Quarto, 1634)

    The Two Noble Kinsmen.
    If thou once thinke upon her.
    915Arc, Yes I love her,
    And if the lives of all my name lay on it,
    I must doe so, I love her with my soule,
    If that will lose ye, farewell Palamon,
    I say againe, I love, and in loving her maintaine
    920I am as worthy, and as free a lover
    And have as just a title to her beauty
    As any Palamon or any living
    That is a mans Sonne.
    Pal. Have I cald thee friend?
    925Arc. Yes, and have found me so; why are you mov'd thus?
    Let me deale coldly with you, am not I
    Part of you blood, part of your soule? you have told me
    That I was Palamon, and you were Arcite.
    Pal. Yes.
    930Arc. Am not I liable to those affections,
    Those joyes, greifes, angers, feares, my friend shall suffer?
    Pal. Ye may be.
    Arc. Why then would you deale so cunningly,
    So strangely, so vnlike a noble kinesman
    935To love alone? speake truely, doe you thinke me
    Vnworthy of her sight?
    Pal. No, but unjust,
    If thou pursue that sight.
    Arc. Because an other
    940First sees the Enemy, shall I stand still
    And let mine honour downe, and never charge?
    Pal. Yes, if he be but one.
    Arc. But say that one
    Had rather combat me?
    945Pal. Let that one say so,
    And use thy freedome: els if thou pursuest her,
    Be as that cursed man that hates his Country,
    A branded villaine.
    Arc. You are mad.
    950Pal. I must be.
    Till thou art worthy, Arcite, it concernes me,
    E And