Why is this play so rarely performed? That's what I -- and, I'll bet, a large portion of the appreciative audience -- wanted to know after seeing the Public Theater's first production of the season, The Two Noble Kinsmen. Perhaps the play has been neglected because of its dubious authorship, though most scholars seem to accept that it was, as the Public bills it, written by both John Fletcher and one Mr. William Shakespeare. In fact, the Bard's fingerprints are all over this one; it's almost as if the rest of the Shakespearean canon had exploded and this was the result.

The play begins with A Midsummer Night's Dream's Theseus and Hippolyta preparing to wed, but the nuptials are soon in[...]