Cardenio
Encyclopedia
The History of Cardenio, often referred to as merely Cardenio, is a lost play
, known to have been performed by The King's Men
, a London
theatre company, in 1613. It was attributed to William Shakespeare
and John Fletcher
in a Stationers' Register
entry of 1653. The content of the play is not known, but it was likely to have been based on an episode in Miguel de Cervantes
' Don Quixote involving the character Cardenio, a young man who has been driven mad and lives in the Sierra Morena
. Thomas Shelton's translation of the First Part of Don Quixote was published in 1612, and would thus have been available to the presumed authors of the play.
It has been claimed that material from The History of Cardenio has survived. Two plays have been put forward as being related to the lost play. Also, a song, "Woods, Rocks and Mountains", composed by Robert Johnson, has been linked to it.
, a bookseller and publisher, who was thereby asserting his right to publish the work. Moseley is not necessarily to be trusted on the question of authorship, as he is known to have falsely used Shakespeare's name in other such entries.
It may be that he was using Shakespeare's name to increase interest in the play. However, some modern scholarship accepts Moseley's attribution, placing the lost work in the same category of collaboration between Fletcher and Shakespeare as The Two Noble Kinsmen
. Fletcher based several of his later plays on works by Cervantes, so his involvement is plausible.
claimed to have obtained three Restoration
-era manuscripts of an unnamed play by Shakespeare, which he edited, "improved", and released under the name Double Falshood, or the Distrest Lovers
. Double Falshood has the plot of the "Cardenio" episode in Don Quixote.
It has been suggested that Theobald was unable to publish the original script, because of Jacob Tonson
's exclusive copyright on Shakespeare's plays. But that contention has been discounted, as the Tonson copyright applied only to the plays he had already published, not to any newly discovered play by Shakespeare; and Theobald edited an edition of the complete works for Tonson, whose commercial interests would have been substantially bettered if he had been able to advertise the edition as containing a hitherto "lost" play. (A prior instance of commercially "enhancing" an edition of Shakespeare's plays by adding new ones was the second reprint of the Third Folio of 1664, which added seven plays, only one of which (Pericles
) has been accepted as at least partly by Shakespeare.)
The fate of Theobald's three alleged manuscripts is unknown. The very existence of three genuine manuscripts of that age is problematical, and Theobald was said to have invited interested persons to view the alleged manuscript, but he then avoided actually displaying them. These facts have led many scholars to conclude that Theobald's play was a hoax written by himself. However, more recent stylometric analysis
leads to the conclusion that Double Falsehood was based on one or more manuscripts written in part by Fletcher and in part by another playwright. The open question is whether that second playwright was Shakespeare. The text contains no more than two or three passages which appear good enough to be even tentatively attributed to Shakespeare, but it is possible that Theobald so heavily edited the text that Shakespeare's style was entirely submerged.
In the late period represented by Shakespeare's known collaborations with Fletcher in Henry VIII
and The Two Noble Kinsmen
, his style had become so involved that it is difficult for an auditor or even a reader to catch the meanings of many passages on a quick hearing or a first read, so Theobald might have found it necessary to alter the text in a way that made Shakespeare's voice unrecognizable. However historian Michael Wood has found an "idiosyncratic" verse in the Theobald adaptation which he believes could only have been written by Shakespeare. Wood also asserts that the lyrics of at least one song by Shakespeare's regular collaborator, composer Robert Johnson, are related to Double Falsehood, indicating that Theobald had access to a genuine original text.
In 2010, the Arden Shakespeare
published Double Falsehood in its series of scholarly editions of Shakespeare's collected works. The editor, Professor Brean Hammond, made a case for the Shakespearean origins of Theobald's play. In 2011 the Royal Shakespeare Company
presented a version of Double Falsehood as "Cardenio, Shakespeare's 'lost play' re-imagined". The critic Michael Billington believes that this version is more suggestive of Fletcher than Shakespeare.
(usually attributed to Thomas Middleton
), identified it as a text of the missing Cardenio in which the characters' names had been changed. However, this attribution is not generally accepted by experts on Shakespeare. In fact, the principal plot in this play bears no resemblance to the Cardenio tale in Don Quixote; but the subplot dramatizes another tale interpolated in the Cardenio episode of Don Quixote (Chs. XXXIII–XXXV) and it employs some of the imagery from that novella. The play is a gory revenge tragedy. In Act III the heroine commits suicide to prevent her abduction, and her lover murders a minor character. Then, in V.i, there are five killings within the space of 25 lines.
Several theatre companies have capitalized on Hamilton's attribution by performing The Second Maiden's Tragedy under the name of Shakespeare's Cardenio, ignoring its disputed status. For instance, a production at Oxford
's Burton Taylor Theatre
in March 2004, claimed to have been the first performance of the play in England
since its putative recovery (although a successful amateur production had premiered at Essex University's Lakeside Theatre on October 15, 1998). A laboratory performance of the play was given on March 17, 1996, at the Linhart Theatre in New York. Hamilton (who was 82 years old at the time) made a presentation after the performance in which he asserted (contrary to his book) that he did not ascribe this play to Shakespeare based on paleographic evidence, but, rather, because he regarded it as a "Romance", which Shakespeare had turned to at the end of his career.
A full production of the play, which noted the contested authorship, was mounted at the Next Theatre in Evanston
, Illinois
in 1998. Another production of the play, billed as William Shakespeare's Cardenio, was staged by the Lone Star Ensemble in 2002 in Los Angeles, directed by James Kerwin
.
In 2010 the Aporia Theatre began work on a new edit from translator and director Luis del Aguila and director Jonathan Busby
, Croydon, in November 2010. Critic Michael Billington
believes this version is more suggestive of Middleton than Shakespeare.
Lost work
A lost work is a document or literary work produced some time in the past of which no surviving copies are known to exist. Works may be lost to history either through the destruction of the original manuscript, or through the non-survival of any copies of the work. Deliberate destruction of works...
, known to have been performed by The King's Men
King's Men (playing company)
The King's Men was the company of actors to which William Shakespeare belonged through most of his career. Formerly known as The Lord Chamberlain's Men during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, it became The King's Men in 1603 when King James ascended the throne and became the company's patron.The...
, a London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
theatre company, in 1613. It was attributed to William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
and John Fletcher
John Fletcher (playwright)
John Fletcher was a Jacobean playwright. Following William Shakespeare as house playwright for the King's Men, he was among the most prolific and influential dramatists of his day; both during his lifetime and in the early Restoration, his fame rivalled Shakespeare's...
in a Stationers' Register
Stationers' Register
The Stationers' Register was a record book maintained by the Stationers' Company of London. The company is a trade guild given a royal charter in 1557 to regulate the various professions associated with the publishing industry, including printers, bookbinders, booksellers, and publishers in England...
entry of 1653. The content of the play is not known, but it was likely to have been based on an episode in Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
' Don Quixote involving the character Cardenio, a young man who has been driven mad and lives in the Sierra Morena
Sierra Morena
The Sierra Morena is one of the main systems of mountain ranges in Spain.It stretches for 400 kilometres East-West across southern Spain, forming the southern border of the Meseta Central plateau of the Iberian Peninsula, and providing the watershed between the valleys of the Guadiana to the...
. Thomas Shelton's translation of the First Part of Don Quixote was published in 1612, and would thus have been available to the presumed authors of the play.
It has been claimed that material from The History of Cardenio has survived. Two plays have been put forward as being related to the lost play. Also, a song, "Woods, Rocks and Mountains", composed by Robert Johnson, has been linked to it.
Attribution
Although there are records of the play having been performed, there is not any information about its authorship earlier than a 1653 entry in the Stationers' Register. The entry was made by Humphrey MoseleyHumphrey Moseley
Humphrey Moseley was a prominent London publisher and bookseller in the middle seventeenth century.Possibly a son of publisher Samuel Moseley, Humphrey Moseley became a "freeman" of the Stationers Company, the guild of London booksellers, on 7 May 1627; he was selected a Warden of the Company on...
, a bookseller and publisher, who was thereby asserting his right to publish the work. Moseley is not necessarily to be trusted on the question of authorship, as he is known to have falsely used Shakespeare's name in other such entries.
It may be that he was using Shakespeare's name to increase interest in the play. However, some modern scholarship accepts Moseley's attribution, placing the lost work in the same category of collaboration between Fletcher and Shakespeare as The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from "The Knight's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales....
. Fletcher based several of his later plays on works by Cervantes, so his involvement is plausible.
Lewis Theobald and Double Falshood
In 1727, Lewis TheobaldLewis Theobald
Lewis Theobald , British textual editor and author, was a landmark figure both in the history of Shakespearean editing and in literary satire...
claimed to have obtained three Restoration
Restoration (1660)
The term Restoration in reference to the year 1660 refers to the restoration of Charles II to his realms across the British Empire at that time.-England:...
-era manuscripts of an unnamed play by Shakespeare, which he edited, "improved", and released under the name Double Falshood, or the Distrest Lovers
Double Falshood
Double Falshood; or, The Distrest Lovers is an early 18th century play by the English writer and playwright Lewis Theobald. Many scholars believe it to be an adaptation of a lost play by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher known as Cardenio...
. Double Falshood has the plot of the "Cardenio" episode in Don Quixote.
It has been suggested that Theobald was unable to publish the original script, because of Jacob Tonson
Jacob Tonson
Jacob Tonson, sometimes referred to as Jacob Tonson the elder was an 18th-century English bookseller and publisher....
's exclusive copyright on Shakespeare's plays. But that contention has been discounted, as the Tonson copyright applied only to the plays he had already published, not to any newly discovered play by Shakespeare; and Theobald edited an edition of the complete works for Tonson, whose commercial interests would have been substantially bettered if he had been able to advertise the edition as containing a hitherto "lost" play. (A prior instance of commercially "enhancing" an edition of Shakespeare's plays by adding new ones was the second reprint of the Third Folio of 1664, which added seven plays, only one of which (Pericles
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
Pericles, Prince of Tyre is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio...
) has been accepted as at least partly by Shakespeare.)
The fate of Theobald's three alleged manuscripts is unknown. The very existence of three genuine manuscripts of that age is problematical, and Theobald was said to have invited interested persons to view the alleged manuscript, but he then avoided actually displaying them. These facts have led many scholars to conclude that Theobald's play was a hoax written by himself. However, more recent stylometric analysis
Stylometry
Stylometry is the application of the study of linguistic style, usually to written language, but it has successfully been applied to music and to fine-art paintings as well.Stylometry is often used to attribute authorship to anonymous or disputed documents...
leads to the conclusion that Double Falsehood was based on one or more manuscripts written in part by Fletcher and in part by another playwright. The open question is whether that second playwright was Shakespeare. The text contains no more than two or three passages which appear good enough to be even tentatively attributed to Shakespeare, but it is possible that Theobald so heavily edited the text that Shakespeare's style was entirely submerged.
In the late period represented by Shakespeare's known collaborations with Fletcher in Henry VIII
Henry VIII (play)
The Famous History of the Life of King Henry the Eight is a history play by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on the life of Henry VIII of England. An alternative title, All is True, is recorded in contemporary documents, the title Henry VIII not appearing until the play's publication...
and The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen
The Two Noble Kinsmen is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from "The Knight's Tale" in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales....
, his style had become so involved that it is difficult for an auditor or even a reader to catch the meanings of many passages on a quick hearing or a first read, so Theobald might have found it necessary to alter the text in a way that made Shakespeare's voice unrecognizable. However historian Michael Wood has found an "idiosyncratic" verse in the Theobald adaptation which he believes could only have been written by Shakespeare. Wood also asserts that the lyrics of at least one song by Shakespeare's regular collaborator, composer Robert Johnson, are related to Double Falsehood, indicating that Theobald had access to a genuine original text.
In 2010, the Arden Shakespeare
Arden Shakespeare
The Arden Shakespeare is a long-running series of scholarly editions of the works of William Shakespeare. It presents fully edited modern-spelling editions of the plays and poems, with lengthy introductions and full commentaries...
published Double Falsehood in its series of scholarly editions of Shakespeare's collected works. The editor, Professor Brean Hammond, made a case for the Shakespearean origins of Theobald's play. In 2011 the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
presented a version of Double Falsehood as "Cardenio, Shakespeare's 'lost play' re-imagined". The critic Michael Billington believes that this version is more suggestive of Fletcher than Shakespeare.
Charles Hamilton and The Second Maiden's Tragedy
In 1990, handwriting expert Charles Hamilton, after seeing a 1611 manuscript known as The Second Maiden's TragedyThe Second Maiden's Tragedy
The Second Maiden's Tragedy is a Jacobean play that survives only in manuscript. It was written in 1611, and performed in the same year by the King's Men. The manuscript that survives is the copy that was sent to the censor, and therefore includes his notes and deletions...
(usually attributed to Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton
Thomas Middleton was an English Jacobean playwright and poet. Middleton stands with John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as among the most successful and prolific of playwrights who wrote their best plays during the Jacobean period. He was one of the few Renaissance dramatists to achieve equal success in...
), identified it as a text of the missing Cardenio in which the characters' names had been changed. However, this attribution is not generally accepted by experts on Shakespeare. In fact, the principal plot in this play bears no resemblance to the Cardenio tale in Don Quixote; but the subplot dramatizes another tale interpolated in the Cardenio episode of Don Quixote (Chs. XXXIII–XXXV) and it employs some of the imagery from that novella. The play is a gory revenge tragedy. In Act III the heroine commits suicide to prevent her abduction, and her lover murders a minor character. Then, in V.i, there are five killings within the space of 25 lines.
Oxford
The city of Oxford is the county town of Oxfordshire, England. The city, made prominent by its medieval university, has a population of just under 165,000, with 153,900 living within the district boundary. It lies about 50 miles north-west of London. The rivers Cherwell and Thames run through...
's Burton Taylor Theatre
Burton Taylor Theatre
The Burton Taylor Studio is a 50-seater studio theatre owned by Oxford University. It is situated on Gloucester Street off Beaumont Street in Oxford, United Kingdom close to the Oxford Playhouse, a larger professional theatre, which manages the Burton Taylor Studio on behalf of the University...
in March 2004, claimed to have been the first performance of the play in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
since its putative recovery (although a successful amateur production had premiered at Essex University's Lakeside Theatre on October 15, 1998). A laboratory performance of the play was given on March 17, 1996, at the Linhart Theatre in New York. Hamilton (who was 82 years old at the time) made a presentation after the performance in which he asserted (contrary to his book) that he did not ascribe this play to Shakespeare based on paleographic evidence, but, rather, because he regarded it as a "Romance", which Shakespeare had turned to at the end of his career.
A full production of the play, which noted the contested authorship, was mounted at the Next Theatre in Evanston
Evanston, Illinois
Evanston is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois 12 miles north of downtown Chicago, bordering Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, and Wilmette to the north, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
in 1998. Another production of the play, billed as William Shakespeare's Cardenio, was staged by the Lone Star Ensemble in 2002 in Los Angeles, directed by James Kerwin
James Kerwin
James Kerwin is an American film and theatre director.Kerwin, who attended Parkway Central High School in Chesterfield, Missouri, has been noted for his Shakespearean adaptations of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cardenio and Venus and Adonis...
.
In 2010 the Aporia Theatre began work on a new edit from translator and director Luis del Aguila and director Jonathan Busby
Warehouse Theatre
The Warehouse Theatre is a professional producing theatre with one hundred seats in the centre of the London Borough of Croydon, south London, England based in an oak-beamed former cement Victorian warehouse...
, Croydon, in November 2010. Critic Michael Billington
Michael Billington (critic)
Michael Keith Billington is a British author and arts critic. Drama critic of The Guardian since October 1971, he is "Britain's longest-serving theatre critic" and the author of biographical and critical studies relating to British theatre and the arts; most notably, he is the authorised...
believes this version is more suggestive of Middleton than Shakespeare.
In popular culture
- Cardenio has been featured as a plot element in literary mystery novels such as Lost in a Good BookLost in a Good BookLost in a Good Book is an alternate history, fantasy novel by Jasper Fforde. It won the IMBA 2004 Dilys Award.-Plot introduction:It is the second book by Jasper Fforde and the sequel to the adventures of literary detective Thursday Next in The Eyre Affair...
(the second book in the Thursday NextThursday NextThursday Next is the main protagonist in a series of comic fantasy, alternate history novels by the British author Jasper Fforde. She was first introduced in Fforde's first published novel, The Eyre Affair, released on July 19, 2001 by Hodder & Stoughton. , the series comprises six books, in two...
series by Jasper FfordeJasper FfordeJasper Fforde is a British novelist. Fforde's first novel, The Eyre Affair, was published in 2001. Fforde is mainly known for his Thursday Next novels, although he has written several books in the loosely connected Nursery Crime series and begun two more independent series: The Last Dragonslayer...
) and Interred With Their BonesInterred with Their BonesInterred With Their Bones is a novel by Jennifer Lee Carrell published in 2007. It was published in the United Kingdom as The Shakespeare Secret...
by Jennifer Lee CarrellJennifer Lee CarrellJennifer Lee Carrell is an American author of three novels and numerous articles for Smithsonian Magazine and Arizona Daily Star.-Background:...
. - In an episode of their BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
radio show on Shakespeare's plays, the Reduced Shakespeare CompanyReduced Shakespeare CompanyThe Reduced Shakespeare Company is an American acting troupe that writes and performs unsubtle, fast-paced, seemingly improvisational condensations of huge topics.- Overview :...
suggests that Cardenio is a "children's play about the legend of King ArthurKing ArthurKing Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...
", and performs a short sketch based on this idea. (RSC Radio Show: The Tragedies, 1994) - Shakespeare scholar Stephen GreenblattStephen GreenblattStephen Jay Greenblatt is a literary critic, theorist and scholar.Greenblatt is regarded by many as one of the founders of New Historicism, a set of critical practices that he often refers to as "cultural poetics"; his works have been influential since the early 1980s when he introduced the term...
and playwright Charles L. MeeCharles L. MeeCharles L. Mee is an American playwright, historian and author known for his collage-like style of playwriting, which makes use of radical reconstructions of found texts.-Early Life and Early Career:...
collaborated on a contemporary re-imagining of Cardenio. This production, directed by Les Waters, premiered at the American Repertory Theater on May 8, 2008. - A stolen copy of a manuscript of Cardenio appears in Trace MemoryTrace Memory (Torchwood)Trace Memory is a BBC Books original novel written by David Llewellyn and based on the British science fiction television, Doctor Who spin-off series Torchwood. It features all the regular cast of the show...
by David LlewellynDavid LlewellynDavid Llewellyn may refer to:*David Llewellyn , member of the Parliament of Tasmania*David Llewellyn , British Member of Parliament for Cardiff North 1950–1959...
in the possession of ex-time traveller Captain Jack HarknessJack HarknessCaptain Jack Harkness is a fictional character played by John Barrowman in Doctor Who and its spin-off series, Torchwood. He first appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child" and reappeared in the remaining episodes of the 2005 series as a companion of the ninth incarnation of the...
. Trace Memory is a novel written for the BBCBBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
series TorchwoodTorchwoodTorchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...
, a spin off of Doctor WhoDoctor WhoDoctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
(whose episode "The Shakespeare CodeThe Shakespeare Code"The Shakespeare Code" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 7 April 2007, and is the second episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series. According to the BARB figures this episode was seen by 7.23 million viewers and was...
" featured the production of Love's Labours Won, Shakespeare's other lost play).
External links
- The Aporia Theatre which is producing a new edit of Shakespeare's Cardenio
- Scoop Review: The History of Cardenio, review by Lyndon Hood, 31 May 2009
- The Alternative Cambridge Theatre's production of "Cardenio", including history of the play and company
- Cardenio, adapted at WikiversityWikiversityWikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project, which supports learning communities, their learning materials, and resulting activities. It differs from more structured projects such as Wikipedia in that it instead offers a series of tutorials, or courses, for the fostering of learning, rather than...