Shakespeare returns to the characters and themes of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in what may have been the last play he had a hand in writing: The Two Noble Kinsmen. This time, however, the story of Theseus and Hippolyta, the disorienting experience of adolescent sexual desire, and the conflict of duties to sovereigns, parents, friends, and spouses are no laughing matter. They are over-shadowed by the play’s source text — Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, in which chance foils Theseus’s best efforts to create order out of chaos and meaning out of loss — and by Shakespeare’s own experience writing tragedy and tragicomedy.

Thomas Luxon is Professor of English, Emeritus at Dartmouth College, where he was also the inaugural Cheheyl Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning. His teaching and scholarship focus on literature of the English Renaissance and Reformation, with a particular interest in John Milton, John Bunyan, John Dryden, and 17th-century English religion and politics. In his revelatory book, Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage, and Friendship (Duquesne UP, 2005), Professor Luxon explores the impact of ancient theories of friendship on Milton’s conception of Reformation marriage, and during the pandemic, he contributed a lecture about the rivalry of friendship and marriage in Two Noble Kinsmen to Ian Doescher’s Shakespeare 2020 Project.

Undiscovered Shakespeare is a public arts and humanities series co-produced by Santa Cruz Shakespeare, UCSC Shakespeare Workshop, and The Humanities Institute. It brings professional actors and scholars together with the public for a staged reading and discussion of works by Shakespeare that are rarely produced.