After Cardenio

A play by Taylor, Jane.

First published in the South African Theatre Journal, 26(2):185-217(2012).

AFTER CARDENIO is a new work of experimental theatre. It is a combination of sculptural puppetry, live performance, sound and visual art. The work is a meditation on the late works of William Shakespeare, whose play The History of Cardenio has disappeared with no extant copy of the original text. The so-called “missing Shakespeare play” was registered in 1653 (shortly after the episode with Anne Greene) by the publisher and bookseller, Humphrey Moseley, who declared that the play was by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, Shakespeare's collaborator on several of his late works. Moseley's credibility has been questioned, because of his commercial interest in the matter, but there is no question that a play titled The History of Cardenio was performed in London in 1613 by the King's Men. Little is known about the play, except that it is presumed that the work is named after Cardenio, a character in Cervantes' great novel, Don Quixote. The work is not set in the Renaissance; rather it is situated in the seventeenth century, in order to consider the legacies of Renaissance philosophy, patriarchy, and statecraft. It is worth noting that in 1652, two years after Anne Greene was hanged, the Dutch East India Company established a landing station at the Cape to facilitate its trade with the East. In such terms the story of Anne, science, and the forensic history of reproductive rights becomes part of the history of empire in South Africa.

AFTER CARDENIO is one of some twelve new works commissioned by Renaissance scholar Stephen Greenblatt from Harvard University, in his deliberations on the “missing Shakespeare play.” CREATIVE TEAM: Writer/director: Jane Taylor Creative collaborator: Aja Marneweck and the Paper Body Collective Puppet sculptor: Gavin Younge Sound design and composition: Julia Raynham Artist: Penny Siopis as anatomy artist CAST: Jemma Kahn as Anne Greene/Dorotea Dylan Esbach as Dr Petty and Cardenio Martin Kintu as primary puppeteer, and Printer, and Luscinda Rouxnet Brown as the Assistant, and warrior puppeteer Jeroen Kranenberg as Town crier and Don Quixote