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| Arcite and Palamon: I ship it. |
Palamon and Arcite are the titular kinsmen (they are cousins... very friendly cousins) of the play. They both hate their uncle, Creon, the King of Thebes, but they fight in his war against Theseus of Athens, for the good of Thebes if nothing else. Creon loses, and Theseus takes the noble cousins prisoner. As soon as they are locked up, they mutually agree that as long as they are together, their dank little cell will be their saviour, protecting them from the temptations and evils of the world. Arcite naturally expounds this sincerest of bromantic speeches. It's worthy of any homoerotic OTP in any fanfiction of your choice. I would cast Bradley James and Colin Morgan in this play so fast you would swear the BBC hadn't even cancelled Merlin.
The supreme irony, however, is that within a few dozen lines of this heartfelt ode to brotherly love, the boys hear the lovely Emilia outside their window and promptly being bickering over who saw her first. Palamon actually says "I saw her first," to which Arcite replies "I saw her too." They spend the rest of the play trying to out-woo each other.
All modern homoerotic interpretation aside (for the moment), the kinsmen demonstrate the Renaissance ideal of friendship--the Platonic, and often physically ambiguous type--between two people of the same sex. It was seen as normal in Shakespeare's time, and was held up as something pure forged in childhood, to be changed in the light of marriage or perhaps lost forever. Much poetry (and plays!) were written about that loss of innocent loyalty, only marred by nothing more than "gender normative" stereotypes. The base and physical familiarity we see everyday between young children is commonplace and celebrated, but past a certain age, it begins to offend most "modern" sensibilities, unfortunately. Arcite and Palamon are one soul bound in two bodies, longing to be with each other.
In the end, these two kiss and make up, as jousting to the death over the hand of a woman will tend to do. *heavy sigh* See how much easier it would have been if you two had just remained boyfriends?
The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act II, Sc. II
Arcite: Let's think this prison holy sanctuary,
To keep us from corruption of worse men.
We are young, and yet desire the ways of honor
That liberty and common conversation,
The poison of pure spirits, might, like women,
Woo us to wander from. What worthy blessing
Can be, but our imaginations
May make it ours? And here being thus together,
We are an endless mine to one another:
We are one another's wife, ever begetting
New births of love; we are father, friends, acquaintance;
We are in one another, families:
I am your heir, and you are mine; this place
Is our inheritance; no hard oppressor
Dare take this from us. Here, with a little patience,
We shall live long and loving. No surfeits seek us;
The hand of war hurts none here, nor the seas
Swallow their youth. Were we at liberty
A wife might part us lawfully, or business;
Quarrels consume us; envy of ill men
Crave our acquaintance. I might sicken, cousin,
Where you should never know it, and so perish
Without your noble hand to close mine eyes,
Or prayers to the gods. A thousand chances,
Were we from hence, would sever us.
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