Cardenio

William Shakespeare and John Fletcher (1613)

Historical Records

The surviving documentation regarding Cardenio consists of two records of payments made to John Hemings for court performances. The records read as follows (reproduced in Hammond, 105-6):

Itm paid to Iohn Heminges vppon lyke warrt: dates att Whithall | ix0 die Iulij 1613 for him soelf and the rest of his fellowes | his Mates servauntes and Players for presenting a playe | before the Duke of Savoyes Embassadour on the viijth daye \ of June 1613 called Cardenna the some of | vjli xiijs iiijd.

Itm paid to the said Iohn Heminges vppon the lyke warrt: | dated att Whitehall xx0 die Maij 1613 for presentinge | sixe severall playes viz one playe called a badd beginninge | makes a good endinge, One other calle ye Capteyne, One | other the Alcumist. / One other Cardenno. / One other | The Hotspurr: / And one other called Benidicte and | Betteris All played wthin the tyme of this Accompte viz. | pd - Fortie powndes, And by waye of his Mats rewarde | twentie powndes In all | lxli. /.

Theatrical Provenance

The play was performed by the King's Men at court in the 1612-13 season, with performances on May 20th and June 8th 1613. The company was at this time performing at both the Globe and the Blackfriars.

Probable Genre(s)

The play is listed as a "History" in Moseley's entry in the Stationers' Register. Lewis Theobald's 1727 play Double Falsehood, which may be an adaptation of a version of Cardenio (see below) is a sentimental romantic tragicomedy. The "Cardenio" episodes of Cervantes' Don Quixote are framed within a parodic romance, but it is debatable whether elements of the parody were retained in the play.

Possible Narrative and Dramatic Sources or Analogues

Based on the title, and on the plot extant in Double Falsehood, most scholars agree that Cardenio is a dramatisation of the "Cardenio" episodes from Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. Thomas Shelton's translation of the first part of the novel was published in 1612 and available to the King's Men as a direct source.

In Cervantes, the deluded Alonso Quesada rechristens himself Don Quixote, knight errant, and with his "squire" Sancho Panza embarks on a chivalric quest through contemporary Spain. During their adventures, they encounter a madman called Cardenio, who has been living in the hills since his betrayal by his noble friend, the Duke Fernando. Fernando had promised marriage to the modest Dorothea, but forsaken her in his pursuit of Cardenio's love, Luscinda. Dorothea similarly lives in the hills, disguised. The Cardenio narrative is interwoven with Quixote's adventures, and Dorothea is recruited by neighbours of Don Quixote to persuade him to return home. Eventually, Cardenio is reconciled to Luscinda and Fernando to Dorothea.

In 1727, Lewis Theobald's play Double Falsehood premiered at Covent Garden, and it was published the following year. Theobald's play, which purports to be "Revised and Adapted" from an original play by Shakespeare, dramatises the Cardenio story only with no mention of the Don Quixote plot. Here, the action is streamlined. Henriquez (Fernando) rapes Violante (Dorothea) and attempts to forcibly wed Leonora (Luscinda), but is prevented by Julio's (Cardenio's) interruption. Julio and Dorothea meet in the wilderness, and the eventual reconciliation is brought about by Roderick, Henriquez's elder brother.

Tiffany Stern has argued that Cardenna could theoretically refer to Cardena in Spain, and thus bear no connection to the Cervantes story (556-57).

References to the Play

On September 9th 1653, Humphrey Moseley entered into the Stationers' Register "The History of Cardenio. By Mr Fletcher. & Shakespeare". The play was not referred to again in the seventeenth century. The next documented occurrence related to the play was the first performance of Lewis Theobald's play Double Falsehood at Covent Garden on December 13th 1727, which dramatised the Cardenio story and claimed to be a reworking of an old, lost play by Shakespeare.

Critical Commentary

Critical commentary has largely concentrated on establishing whether or not Theobald's play is a genuine adaptation of a Shakespeare/Fletcher play, an adaptation of a different work, or a forgery. A less vocal, but important, strand of criticism debates whether or not a play called "Cardenio" ever existed.

For What It's Worth

A discredited argument, advanced by Charles Hamilton in 1994, is that the untitled manuscript play known variously as The Second Maiden's Tragedy, The Lady's Tragedy or The Maiden's Tragedy is Cardenio. Hamilton's argument depends on that play's source in Don Quixote, in a story interwoven with (but independent of) the Cardenio plot; and on Hamilton's identification of the handwriting in the manuscript with Shakespeare's extant signatures. Hamilton's case has met with little academic support, but The Second Maiden's Tragedy is still occasionally revived under the title Cardenio.

Works Cited

Bradford Jr., Gamaliel. "The History of Cardenio by Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare." Modern Language Notes 25 (1910), 51-6.

Freehafer, John. "Cardenio, by Shakespeare and Fletcher". PMLA 84.3 (1969), 501-13.

Hamilton, Charles (ed.). Cardenio, or The Second Maiden's Tragedy. Lakewood: Col., 1994.

Hammond, Brean (ed.). Double Falsehood. London: Methuen, 2010.

Pujante, A. Luis. "Double Falsehood and the Verbal Parallels with Shelton's Don Quixote." Shakespeare Survey 51 (1998), 95-105.

Stern, Tiffany. "'The Forgery of some modern Author'?: Theobald's Shakespeare and Cardenio's Double Falsehood." Shakespeare Quarterly 62.4 (2011), 555-93.

Site created and maintained by Peter Kirwan, University of Nottingham; updated 29 December 2011.