The Two Noble Kinsmen has only relatively recently achieved recognition as a legitimate part of the Shakespeare canon. For centuries it stayed within the now largely superseded category of “Shakespeare apocrypha”, partly because it is clear from the earliest records that the play was collaboratively written – by Shakespeare and a younger playwright, John Fletcher, with whom Shakespeare also wrote Henry VIII and the lost Cardenio during the same brief period in 1612-13 – and critics persisted in finding it hard to accept that Shakespeare could have collaborated with “lesser” playwrights. But now, included in all current Shakespeare “complete works” editions, with critics taking it seriously both as the last play in which Shakespeare had a hand and as a dark and unsettling analysis of politics and of gender relations, and with productions taking place...
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Citation: McMullan, Gordon. "The Two Noble Kinsmen". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 30 June 2002; last revised 02 December 2020. [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=9449, accessed 09 June 2026.]
