t on the morning of May. And when by
process of time the grief and mourning for Arcite had ceased, Theseus sent
for Palamon and Emilia; and with wise words bidding them be merry after
woe, gave Emilia to Palamon, who wedded her, and they lived in bliss and in
richness and in health.

"Thus endeth Palamon and Emelye.
And God save all this faire companye!"

Such is Chaucer's tale of Palamon and Arcite. It was dramatised before
Shakespeare's day by Richard Edwardes in a play now lost. Possibly the play
of "Palamon and Arcite" four times recorded--in for different spellings--by
Henslowe in his _Diary_[14] is Edwardes' play, but as the latter was
performed at Oxford before Queen Elizabeth as early as 1566, it is at least
equally possible that Henslowe's play is another version.

The complete Chaucerian form of the story of Palamon and Arcite is
dramatised in _The Two Noble Kinsmen_, a play to which Shakespeare
undoubtedly[15] contributed. The changes made by the authors--Fletcher and
Massinger or Shakespeare, or all three--are little more than such
limitations as are demanded by dramatic form; for instance, the Kinsmen,
when discovered fighting, are dismissed for a month to find three knights,
instead of being given a year to find one hundred. Chaucer's hint, that
Palamon was assisted to escape from prison by a friend, is developed by the
dramatists to make the sub-plot of the gaoler's daughter. The
character-drawing is far more subtle than the poet's; Chaucer leaves the
reader's sympathies equally divided, despite the fact that he says plainly
that Arcite was in the wrong, because he violated the compact of the two
kinsmen to assist each other in love.

We must now consider what justification there is for believing that the
main plot of _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_ was suggested by _The Knightes
Tale_. Firstly, as has already been pointed out, the nuptials of Theseus
form the beginning of both play and poem; though in the poem the actual
ceremony has been performed, and it is his triumphant return to the city of
Athens that is interrupted by the widows' appeal for justice; and in the
play the action passes in the three or four days before the marriage.
Secondly, the wedding-day is the first of May, and there are two references
to that "observance of May"[16] which is given by Chaucer as the reason
both for Emilia's walking in the garden and for Arcite's seeking of the
grove where Palamon lay hid.[17] Thirdly, it can h