The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play
This book is about the search for a lost play. Celebrating the quatercentenary of publication of the first translation of Don Quixote, it is the first collection of essays entirely devoted to The History of Cardenio, a play based on Cervantes and probably written in that same year. It was said to be written by Shakespeare and the young man who was taking his place, John Fletcher, the most successful English playwright of the seventeenth century. The book brings together leading scholars, critics, and theatre practitioners to discuss the lost (or partially lost) play. It also re-examines Lewis Theobald's 1727 Double Falsehood, allegedly based on Cardenio. A range of approaches -new archival evidence, employment of advanced computer-aided stylometric tests for authorship attribution, early modern theatre history, literary and theatrical analysis, musicology, and recent theatrical productions and adaptations - produces new research findings about the play, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the early modern relationship between Spanish and English culture. The book establishes the dates, venues, and audience for two performances of Cardenio by the King's Men in 1613, and identifies glimpses of the play in several seventeenth-century documents. It also provides much new evidence and analysis of Double Falsehood, which Theobald claimed was based on previously unknown manuscripts of a play by Shakespeare. His enemies, especially Pope, denied the Shakespeare attribution. Debate has continued ever since. While some contributors advocate sceptical caution, new research provides stronger evidence than ever before that a lost Fletcher/Shakespeare Cardenio can be discerned within Double Falsehood. Uniquely, this collection combines archival research and literary analysis with accounts of recent theatrical experiments, which explore the Cardenio problem by reviving or adapting Double Falsehood, and demonstrate that such practical theatrical work throws valuable light on some of the problems that have obstructed traditional scholarly approaches. It thus offers a new paradigm for the creative interaction of scholarship and performance.
1110918596
The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play
This book is about the search for a lost play. Celebrating the quatercentenary of publication of the first translation of Don Quixote, it is the first collection of essays entirely devoted to The History of Cardenio, a play based on Cervantes and probably written in that same year. It was said to be written by Shakespeare and the young man who was taking his place, John Fletcher, the most successful English playwright of the seventeenth century. The book brings together leading scholars, critics, and theatre practitioners to discuss the lost (or partially lost) play. It also re-examines Lewis Theobald's 1727 Double Falsehood, allegedly based on Cardenio. A range of approaches -new archival evidence, employment of advanced computer-aided stylometric tests for authorship attribution, early modern theatre history, literary and theatrical analysis, musicology, and recent theatrical productions and adaptations - produces new research findings about the play, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the early modern relationship between Spanish and English culture. The book establishes the dates, venues, and audience for two performances of Cardenio by the King's Men in 1613, and identifies glimpses of the play in several seventeenth-century documents. It also provides much new evidence and analysis of Double Falsehood, which Theobald claimed was based on previously unknown manuscripts of a play by Shakespeare. His enemies, especially Pope, denied the Shakespeare attribution. Debate has continued ever since. While some contributors advocate sceptical caution, new research provides stronger evidence than ever before that a lost Fletcher/Shakespeare Cardenio can be discerned within Double Falsehood. Uniquely, this collection combines archival research and literary analysis with accounts of recent theatrical experiments, which explore the Cardenio problem by reviving or adapting Double Falsehood, and demonstrate that such practical theatrical work throws valuable light on some of the problems that have obstructed traditional scholarly approaches. It thus offers a new paradigm for the creative interaction of scholarship and performance.
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The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play

The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play

The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play

The Quest for Cardenio: Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the Lost Play

Overview

This book is about the search for a lost play. Celebrating the quatercentenary of publication of the first translation of Don Quixote, it is the first collection of essays entirely devoted to The History of Cardenio, a play based on Cervantes and probably written in that same year. It was said to be written by Shakespeare and the young man who was taking his place, John Fletcher, the most successful English playwright of the seventeenth century. The book brings together leading scholars, critics, and theatre practitioners to discuss the lost (or partially lost) play. It also re-examines Lewis Theobald's 1727 Double Falsehood, allegedly based on Cardenio. A range of approaches -new archival evidence, employment of advanced computer-aided stylometric tests for authorship attribution, early modern theatre history, literary and theatrical analysis, musicology, and recent theatrical productions and adaptations - produces new research findings about the play, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Cervantes, and the early modern relationship between Spanish and English culture. The book establishes the dates, venues, and audience for two performances of Cardenio by the King's Men in 1613, and identifies glimpses of the play in several seventeenth-century documents. It also provides much new evidence and analysis of Double Falsehood, which Theobald claimed was based on previously unknown manuscripts of a play by Shakespeare. His enemies, especially Pope, denied the Shakespeare attribution. Debate has continued ever since. While some contributors advocate sceptical caution, new research provides stronger evidence than ever before that a lost Fletcher/Shakespeare Cardenio can be discerned within Double Falsehood. Uniquely, this collection combines archival research and literary analysis with accounts of recent theatrical experiments, which explore the Cardenio problem by reviving or adapting Double Falsehood, and demonstrate that such practical theatrical work throws valuable light on some of the problems that have obstructed traditional scholarly approaches. It thus offers a new paradigm for the creative interaction of scholarship and performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780199641819
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 10/25/2012
Pages: 436
Product dimensions: 6.10(w) x 9.50(h) x 4.10(d)

About the Author

David Carnegie is Research Professor of Theatre at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is co-editor of the Cambridge edition of The Works of John Webster, and has published widely on Elizabethan drama and stagecraft. He has also worked professionally as a director, dramaturg, and critic, and directed the first full production of Gary Taylor's 'creative reconstruction' of Double Falsehood entitled The History of Cardenio.

Gary Taylor is George Matthew Edgar Professor of English at Florida State University. He is general editor of prize-winning, innovative Oxford editions of Shakespeare's Complete Works and Middleton's Collected Works, as well as a prize-winning book on Shakespeare in performance, Moment by Moment by Shakespeare. In addition to his twenty-two scholarly books, he has written for newspapers and magazines on both sides of the Atlantic, been widely interviewed on radio and television, and spoken at major theatres in the UK, USA, and Canada. His reconstruction of The History of Cardenio has been developed through workshops and readings at many theatres, including Shakespeare's Globe (London), the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, the American Shakespeare Center, and the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington D.C.

Table of Contents

Setting the Stage1. Introduction, David Carnegie2. A History of iThe History of Cardenio/i, Gary Taylor3. After Arden, Brean HammondExternal Evidence: What the Documents Say4. iCardenio/i and the Eighteenth-century Shakespeare Canon, Edmund G. C. King5. Malone's iDouble Falsehood/i, Ivan Lupic6. 'Whether one did Contrive, the other Write, / Or one Fram'd the Plot, the Other did Indite': Fletcher and Theobald as Collaborative Writers, Tiffany SternInternal Evidence: What Style and Structure Say7. Looking for Shakespeare in iDouble Falsehood/i: Stylistic Evidence, MacDonald P. Jackson8. Can iDouble Falsehood/i Be Merely a Forgery by Lewis Theobald?, Richard Proudfoot9. Theobald's Pattern of Adaptation: iThe Duchess of Malfi/i and iRichard II/i, David Carnegie10. Four Characters in Search of a Subplot: Quixote, Sancho, and iCardenio/i, Gary Taylor and John V. NanceIntertexts and Cross-currents11. iDon Quixote/i and Shakespeare's Collaborative Turn to Romance, Valerie Wayne12. The Friend in iCardenio/i, iDouble Falsehood/i, and iDon Quixote/i, Huw Griffiths13. Transvestism, Transformation, and Text: Cross-dressing and Gender Roles in iDouble Falsehood/i/iThe History of Cardenio/i, Lori Leigh14. In This Good Time: iCardenio/i and the Temporal Character of Shakespearean Drama, Matthew WagneriCardenio/i for Performance15. A Select Chronology of iCardenio/i, David Carnegie16. The Embassy, The City, The Court, The Text: iCardenio/i Performed in 1613, Gary Taylor17. iCardenio/i without Shakespeare, Roger Chartier18. Nostalgia for the Cervantes-Shakespeare link: Charles David Ley's iHistoria de Cardenio/i, Angel-Luis Pujante19. Cultural Mobility and Transitioning Authority: Greenblatt's iCardenio Project/i, Carla Della Gatta20. Re-imagining iCardenio/i, Bernard Richards21. Will the Real iCardenio/i Please Stand Up: Review of Richards' Cardenio in Cambridge, Richard Proudfoot22. Theobald Restor'd: iDouble Falsehood/i at the Union Theatre, Southwark, Peter Kirwan23. Restoring iDouble Falsehood/i to the Perpendicular for the RSC, Gregory Doran24. Exploring iThe History of Cardenio/i in Performance, David Carnegie and Lori Leigh25. Taylor's iThe History of Cardenio/i in Wellington, David Lawrence26. 'May I be metamorphosed': iCardenio/i by Stages, Terri Bourus
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Related Subjects

Literature
Literary Criticism
Drama - Literary Criticism
English Literature
English Drama - 16th-17th Century - Elizabethan & Jacobean Eras - Shakespeare - Literary Criticism
Literature
Literary Criticism
Drama - Literary Criticism
English Literature
English Drama - 16th-17th Century - Elizabethan & Jacobean Eras - Shakespeare - Literary Criticism

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