Baba Brinkman - The Knight's Tale (Scene 1) lyrics

As history teaches us, it happened to be That Theseus, the governor of Athens in Greece Attacked and besieged, with wisdom and honour The land of the Amazon women, and conquered And wedded their Queen Ypolita; along with her Young sister Emilye, his plundered possessions Theseus met them with a humble reception And he let them come back with him, under protection From hundreds of weapons, to Athens and kept them Upon his return to Greece, Theseus learned of these Awful and shameful dishonoured injustices Brought to the name of the monarch entrusted with Keeping the city of Thebes In the dust with his Power obsolete in a coward's defeat He now was deceased and cast out in the streets Where the hounds with their teeth would devour his meat His widow, the queen, in her hour of need Showered pleas on Theseus from down on her knees So he proudly agreed to put the town under siege And surrounded Thebes with all his men And pounded the city's walls, and when Those towers were downfallen, then His troops to dust demolished them And when the brawl was ended he finally obtained And returned to the Thebian Queen, for her pains The rest of her husband's majestic remains Deep in the wreckage the people were left with Two knights were detected, well dressed and connected By royal bloodlines, though it was expected They would be dead soon from the head-wounds inflicted But Theseus ordered that they be protected And sent them to Athens where they could be hidden And by his decision, the two knights were given A prison to live in, though they were forbidden To step from within ‘til their ghosts had up-risen The names of these knights, in plain language: Arcite and Palamon. Utterly thankless That they were not hanged with the rest of the vanquished They were caged in a tower for ages to languish And waste away hours and days with their anguish Years pa**, ‘til at last on a bright May morning Emilye rose, as dawn was just forming To walk in the garden, with flowers adorning Her head as a tribute to spring, and her singing As soft as an angel's, rose up and just happened To waft in a window and cause a distraction And that's when the pa**ionate noise then up-rose To where Palamon paced, giving voice to his woes “Woe is me, woe woe...” And then he sees her “Whoah!” Palamon, struck to the quick by this vision In his heart knew his lust to conflict his religion I mean, she looked like a goddess, and he must be forgiven If he thought she was Venus and asked for deliverance As he felt an up-surging of happiness in him A hope was emerging that perhaps she would give him A premature evacuation from prison Meanwhile, Arcite had noticed the cracks in His cousin's demeanor and focus, and asked him: “Why are you looking so hopeless, what's happened? What have you seen to provoke this reaction?” And Palamon sighed: “I'm choked with such pa**ion For her that I see down below, yet I'm trapped in This prison, my station the lowest in Athens Until I escape, I'll have no satisfaction.” See Palamon had gazed, and had paid the price And Arcite now bravely laid his eyes Amazed upon the maiden guise Of Emilye, and to his great surprise She made him sigh, and feel as sore Inside as Palamon, and more Arcite fell to the stone and swore: “This fresh beauty and peerless grace Has rescued me; it clears away The sorrow of this dreary place If only she'd appear each day I'd cheerfully stay here just to see her face.” Palamon's answer was close to delirious: “Be clear with this, brother, are you joking or serious?” Choking on tears, his emotions were furious Arcite just sneered at this like: “I would never say Anything as heavyweight as this merely in clever play.” Palamon felt his pleasure fade: “Well, then you have betrayed me, and openly broken Your oath to me, plainly by both of us spoken So faithfully, traded to pose as a token Of total devotion; we must put that above Any quarrel we have over matters of love All we have is our blood, and that is a trust Rather tough to just patch up after it's cut.” Arcite laughed as if touched, with a covered smirk: “In other words, since you loved her first I'm supposed to pretend like it doesn't hurt And I'm not even allowed to covet her When I'm the one who suffers worst Why should I thirst while my brother flirts? It's enough to reverse one's trusted word.” Their hate and need were great indeed And made them seethe impatiently But destiny soon gave them leave Of one another's company When Arcite was released suddenly Cause one of his friends did something To please Theseus who grudgingly agreed To let Arcite run free But the pardon came with one decree That, once released from his country If Arcite came within a hundred feet Of Athens, he'd soon be underneath The axe and be beheaded violently So he returned to abide in Thebes Now, try and see the irony Palamon was left in the tyrant's keep With shackled hands and ironed feet And every day his eyes could peek At Emilye, in all her vibrancy While Arcite was unconfined, yet he Was not allowed inside the city Of Athens And if he tried to sneak Or slyly creep by, it'd be Like a deadly game of hide and seek So Emilye was outside his reach But it's up to you to decide which of these Two knights' bleak lives was the highest defeat