[Sidenote: Act II. scene i. Fletcher's.] _Palamon._ If thou lovest her, Or entertain'st a hope to blast my wish|es, Thou art a traitor, Arcite, and a fel|low False as thy title to her. Friendship, blood, And all the ties between us, I disclaim, If thou once think upon her! _Arcite._ Yes, I love | her! And, if the lives of all my name lay on | it, I must do so. I love her with my soul; If that will lose thee, Palamon, farewell! I say again I love, and, loving her I am as worthy and as free a lov|er, And have as just a title to her beau|ty, As any Palamon, or any liv|ing That is a man's son! _Palamon._ Have I call'd thee friend! . . . . . _Palamon._ Put but thy head out of this window more, And, as I have a soul, I'll nail thy life to't! _Arcite._ Thou dar'st not, fool: thou canst not: thou art fee|ble: Put my head out? I'll throw my body out, And leap the garden, when I see her next, And pitch between her arms to anger thee. [Sidenote: Fletcher has left out Chaucer's making the Knights 'sworn brethren.'] In transferring his story from Chaucer, the poet has here been guilty of an oversight. The old poet fixes a character of positive guilt on Arcite's prosecution of his passion, by relating a previous agreement between the two cousins, by which either, engaging in any adventure whether of love or war, had an express right to the co-operation of the other. Hence Arcite's interference with his cousin's claim becomes, with Chaucer, a direct infringement of a knightly compact; while in the drama, no deeper blame attaches to it, than as a violation of the more fragile rules imposed by the generous spirit of friendship. In the midst of the angry conference, Arcite is called to the Duke to receive his freedom; and Palamon is placed in stricter confinement, and removed from the quarter of the tower overlooking the garden. [Sidenote: Act II. scene ii. (Weber, sc. iii. Littledale) is Fletcher's.] In the second scene of this act, Arcite, wandering in the [39:1]neighbourhood of Athens, soliloquizes on the decree which had banished him from the Athenian territory; and, falling in with a band of country people on their way to games in the city, conceives the notion of joining in the celebration under some poor disguise, in the hope of finding means to remain within sight of his fancifully beloved mistress. [Sidenote: Act II. scene ii. iii. (Weber, sc. iii. iv. Littledale),] Neither this scene, nor the following, in which the jailor's daughter meditates on the perfections of Palamon, and intimates an intention of assisting him to escape, have any thing in them worthy of particular notice. [Sidenote: Act II. scene iv. (Weber, sc. v. Littledale),]