Summary
In the temple, Arcite prays the Mars for victory, Palamon prays to Venus for love, and Emilia prays to Diana for the man who loves her best to win the battle.
Emilia does not watch the battle, but stands off to the side and has the events narrated to her.
Eventually, it becomes clear that Arcite is the victor. Theseus leads Emilia to Arcite and announces that the couple is free to get married.
Nobody is pleased with the stipulation that Palamon must now die, but Theseus is obligated to fulfill his terms and Palamon is obligated to accept his fate.
Palamon is led to the execution block. Just as Palamon is about to be executed, Pirithous enters with a messenger and informs Palamon that Arcite is mortally wounded after being thrown from his horse.
Theseus, Emilia, and Hippolyta enter, followed by Arcite in a chair. Before dying, Arcite asks for Palamon's forgiveness and gives him his blessing to marry Emilia.
Arcite dies, and Theseus reflects on the strange events, believing that each person (Arcite, Palamon, and Emilia) got what they had prayed for. He announces that they will hold a funeral for Arcite followed by a wedding for Palamon and Emilia.
Analysis
In the final act of the play, the battle between Palamon and Arcite presents audiences with a textbook tragicomic ending, including one death (tragic) and one marriage (comic). The characters themselves strive to make sense of these events that foster mixed emotions, most notably Emilia who asks, upon Arcite's victory and Palamon's impending execution, whether this outcome can truly be described as "winning."
In so doing, Emilia expresses her subtle critique of the chivalric order that led to the cousins' fates. Why, Emilia implies to the audience, must Palamon die at all? And furthermore, why must her hand in marriage be decided by a fatal battle? It is in asking this question that Emilia once again expresses her own sense of agency as a female observer to the action – indeed, she does not take part in the duel but simply listens as someone describes it to her – even if she is not powerful enough to change the bleak circumstances herself.
Theseus maintains a decidedly less skeptical explanation for the outcome of the battle. Embodying the theme of fate and destiny, Theseus believes that the outcomes of Arcite, Palamon, and Emilia were dictated by their prayers to the gods: Arcite prayed to Mars for victory (which he received in his defeat of Palamon), Palamon prayed to Venus for love (which he receives in his marriage to Emilia), and Emilia prayed to Diana for the right man (which she, too, presumably receives, although the play ambiguously suggests that either Palamon or Arcite would have loved her best).
Theseus's interpretation and summation of the events are relatively cut and dry; there is no room for questioning what happened – as Emilia does – or wondering if things could have gone differently. Instead, by attributing the outcome of the duel to the gods, Theseus is able to maintain that he, as the powerful Duke of Athens, was acting according to principles also sanctified by the gods.
In this way, the play returns audiences to its more ironic register in its conclusion, as Theseus's advice to everyone to simply accept the fates that befall them is largely at odds with a conclusion that presents both extremes of comic and tragic fates.
