Once lost, now found...at least partially...
Cardenio, or more
properly...The History of Cardenio,
is the one play of Shakespeare that cannot be found. It's lost...or is it?
The King’s Men (Shakespeare's merry company of actors) performed
the piece in 1613, so it's known that it exists, and it's historically documented
that the play was a collaborative work with John Fletcher. So where did it "run off" too? It appears in none of the existing copies of
the First Folio (perhaps one...maybe...more on that later), which is odd as the
rest of Shakespeare’s known performed plays are published in this 1623 tome...
The play sprang
forth from a very popular novel of the time, perhaps the first international best
seller, Don Quixote by
Cervantes. It had been translated from Spanish into English in 1812 and was ripe for commercial exploitation by an
entertainment hungry populace having no money to buy luxuries such as books. Using Don
Quixote, Shakespeare and Fletcher fashioned a play to please this audience
and put a few more angels into their own pockets.
Presumably, the stage play script was lost, overshadowed
by the Bard's earlier, more popular works as time marched on following his death
in 1616. But was it? In 1727 a "new" play appeared
called Double Falshood. "Written" by Lewis Theobald, it's
clearly stated on the title page that it was adapted from a play by Shakespeare,
but one must wonder which play he had pinched from...perhaps he knew Cardenio was so unknown or lost that he
could work a Pound or two from it's revitalization.
There is no doubt that some if not virtually all of Cardenio is extant in Double Falshood, but is an original printing or manuscript to be had? It must have existed at one time, Theobald saw one or the other...perhaps both. There is a scant chance that Cardenio was printed in at least one copy of the First Folio. Rumor is that a previously unknown copy residing in Scotland was found recently and it has Cardenio within its pages. It could be a hoax...there is only one news story in regards to it...and I can't find anything further.
Should you wish to read it...and feel like you've found some buried treasure...