The Complete Works of William Shakespeare - Israel Gollancz William Shakespeare [1278]
In 1990, handwriting expert Charles Hamilton, after seeing a 1611 manuscript known as The Second Maiden's Tragedy (usually attributed to Thomas Middleton), identified it as the missing Cardenio in which the characters' names had been changed. However, this is not generally accepted by Shakespearean scholars and the plot bears no resemblance to the Cardenio tale in Don Quixote. The text of The Second Maiden's Tragedy is available in the Apocryphal section of this works and can be accessed from this link.
DOUBLE FALSEHOOD
OR
THE DISTREST LOVERS
This 1727 play was produced by the playwright Lewis Theobald. Many scholars now believe it is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s lost play Cardenio. Theobald himself claimed his version was based on three manuscripts of an unnamed lost play by Shakespeare. The play concerns the "Cardenio" episode in Don Quixote. Theobald's play changes the names of the main characters from the Spanish original; for example. Cervantes' Cardenio becomes Julio and his Lucinda becomes Leonora.
Publisher Humphrey Moseley was the first to link Cardenio with Shakespeare, as the title page of his edition of 1647, entered at the Stationers' Register on 9 September 1653, credits the work to "Mr Fletcher & Shakespeare". However, Moseley’s attribution of plays to Shakespeare has often been received with scepticism, due to how he was most likely trying to increase interest in his printings.
Theobald's claim of a Shakespearean text in Double Falsehood was met with suspicion, and even accusations of forgery, from contemporaries such as Alexander Pope and subsequent generations of critics. Nevertheless, Theobald is regarded by critics as a far more serious scholar than Pope, and even as being a forerunner of modern textual criticism. The evidence of Shakespeare's connection with a dramatisation of the Cardenio story comes from the entry in the Stationers' Register, but Theobald could not have known of this evidence, since it was not found until long after his death. Now, the scholarly consensus judges the play to be an 18th-century rewriting of the lost Cardenio and for the first time editors are including the text in their complete works editions of Shakespeare.
Double Falsehood was first performed on 13 December 1727 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and published in 1728. The drama was revived at Covent Garden on 24 April 1749, and performed again on 6 May of the same year. Later performances occurred in 1781 and 1793. The play is set in Andalusia, Spain and the opening scene introduces Duke Angelo and his elder son and heir, Roderick, who is his loyal and virtuous son. The Duke also has a younger son, Henriquez, a scapegrace and prodigal who is absent from the ducal court, pursuing his own interests.
The original title page
CONTENTS
PREFACE OF THE EDITOR
PROLOGUE
EPILOGUE
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
Act I. Scene I.
Scene II. Prospect of a Village at a Distance.
Scene III.
Act II. Scene I.
Scene II. An Apartment.
Scene III. Prospect of a Village, before Don Bernard’s House.
Act III. Scene I.
Scene II. Don Bernard’s House.
Scene III. Prospect of a Village at a Distance.
Act IV. Scene I.
Scene II.
Act V. Scene I.
PREFACE OF THE EDITOR
The Success, which this Play has met with from the Town in the Representation, (to say nothing of the Reception it found from those Great Judges, to whom I have had the Honour of communicating it in Manuscript;) has almost made the Purpose of a Preface unnecessary: And therefore what I have to say, is design’d rather to wipe out a flying Objection or two, than to labour at proving it the Production of Shakespeare.
It has been alledg’d as incredible, that such a Curiosity should be stifled and lost to the World for above a Century. To This my Answer is short; that tho’ it never till now made its Appearance on the