Cardenio

by William Shakespeare. Ostensibly Shakespeare's lost play". The full title was The History of Cardenio, though it is often referred to as Cardenio.

History

It is a lost play, known to have been performed by The King's Men, a London theatre company, in 1613, (though some sources, such as the RSC website, aver that records show that a play by Shakespeare called Cardenna was performed at court in the winter of 1612). A play called The History of Cardenio , attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, was registered in a Stationers' Register entry of 1653 by the publisher and bookseller, Humphrey Moseley.

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.

Adaptations and reconstructions

Over the years there have been a number of claims to have found the text, or of attempts to "reconstruct" the text. These include Lewis Theobald and Double Falshood; Charles Hamilton and The Second Maiden's Tragedy;

In 2010 the RSC Chief Associate Director Gregory Doran tried to piece together Shakespeare's 'lost play' as part of the RSC 50th Birthday Season in the Swan Theatre, during winter 2011. It was performed under the title Cardenio. RSC Chief Associate Director Gregory Doran decided to try and piece together Shakespeare's 'lost play' as part of the RSC 50th Birthday Season in the Swan Theatre, during winter 2011.

in 2012 Indiana University and Purdue University-Indianapolis (IUPUI) theatre department staged the first professional, full-scale production of the History or Cardenio, as resurrected by Gary Taylor from lewis Theobald's text.

Drawing on a team of writers which included Cervantes, Shakespeare, Fletcher, Shelton and Lewis Theobald, his re-imagined Cardenio took his audience on a journey to 16th century Spain.

The first South African production, was by Artscape, from 12 January to 16 February 2013 at the Maynardville Open-Air Theatre, in repertory with A Midsummer Night's Dream – (23 January to 26 February 2013).