The Two Noble Kinsmen was first published in 1634. It appeared as a quarto, printed by Thomas Cotes for the bookseller John Waterson. The play had been entered in the Stationers' Register on 8 April 1634, an important step in securing the right to publish it.
The work is generally attributed jointly to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher. Its story follows Palamon and Arcite, two Theban noblemen who become rivals for Emilia's love. The plot ultimately derives from “The Knight's Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, which itself draws on earlier classical and Italian sources.
The 1634 publication date is easy to confuse with 1623, the year of Shakespeare's First Folio. The Two Noble Kinsmen was not included in that volume, nor was it printed in the later Shakespeare folios. Modern scholarship usually dates its composition and first performances to around 1613–1614, making it one of Shakespeare's final dramatic works and a collaboration from the late Jacobean theatre.