This eccentric play, a version of Chaucer's Knight's Tale, intersects the story of Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream just before his marriage, which is here deferred to allow him to lead an army against Creon to revenge the widowing of three lamenting Queens. He returns victorious with two prisoners who fall in love with Emilia, the sister of his bride, Hippolyta (see a video from the Berkeley Shakespeare Program's production). After many vicissitudes one dies and the other marries a reluctant Emilia. Their jailer's daughter runs mad for love of one of the prisoners but is cured by marriage to a plebeian suitor. The marriages are celebrated by a Morris Dance serving roughly the role of Pyramus and Thisbe in the earlier play (see Staging a Romance: The Two Noble Kinsmen (1978)). This neglected play, co-authored apparently by Shakespeare and his successor John Fletcher, was scarcely performed until the twentieth century, but the charm and pathos of its lovers have earned it several professional productions recently (notables include RSC 1986 and RSC 2000), with some success.