the 'Troilus and Cressida' presents another classical and chivalrous subject, which Chaucer had handled at great length, also invested with the richness of the romantic garb and decoration. [Sidenote: Shakspere chose the story of the _Two Noble Kinsmen_.] Fletcher and Shakspeare being thus opposed to each other in their choice of subjects, what qualities are there in the Plot of The Two Noble Kinsmen, which may appropriate the choice of it to either? In the first place, it is a chivalrous subject,--a classical story which had already been told in the Gothic style. [Sidenote: Fletcher would neither have chosen Chaucer's classical story for his plot,] The nature of the story then could have been no recommendation of it to Fletcher. He has not a single other subject of the sort; he has even written one play in ridicule of chivalrous observances; and the sarcasm of that humorous piece[66:1], both in the general design and the particular references, is aimed solely at the prose romances of knight-errantry, a diseased and posthumous off-shoot from the parent-root, whose legitimate and ancient offspring, the metrical chronicles and tales, he seems neither to have known nor cared for. [Sidenote: nor an old story,] Secondly, this story must have been unacceptable to Fletcher, because it was a fa[66:2]miliar one in England. This fact is perhaps sufficiently proved by its being the subject of that animated and admirable poem of Chaucer, which Dryden has pronounced little inferior to the Iliad or Æneid; but it is still more distinctly shewn by a third fact, which completely clenches the argument against Fletcher's choice of it as a subject. [Sidenote: nor one on which two 16th-century plays had been written.] No fewer than two plays had been written on this story before the end of the sixteenth century; the earlier of the two, the Palamon and Arcite of Edwards, acted in 1566, and printed in 1585, and another play called by the same name, brought on the stage in 1594.[66:3] [Sidenote: Fletcher didn't choose the subject of _The Two Noble Kinsmen_.]