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Cardenio, by Shakespeare and Fletcher

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

John Freehafer
John Freehafer*
Affiliation:
Temple University, Philadelphia, Pa.
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Abstract

Cardenio, a “lost” play of 1612-13 based on Shelton's translation of Don Quixote (1612), is partly preserved, in altered form, in Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood of 1727. Theobald probably altered Cardenio drastically, as he did Richard II. To internal evidence that Cardenio was written by Shakespeare and Fletcher can be added chronological evidence and reluctant testimony to the joint authorship by the publisher Moseley, Charles Gildon, and Theobald. One of Theobald's three manuscripts can be traced in the hands of Moseley, the Davenants, Betterton, Gildon, Theobald's patron (Charles Boyle), and Theobald. A Restoration performance probably was intended. Theobald persisted in claiming that the original play was by Shakespeare alone after he learned otherwise, from Gildon and the Stationers' Register, to save his reputation as a Shakespeare scholar and please his patron. To protect his “Shakespeare” play, Theobald obtained a unique royal license, which Pope ridiculed in the Dunciad. Theobald probably sold his play and Shakespeare manuscripts outright to his publisher. He was prevented from publishing Cardenio by the copyright Act of 1710, the practice of regarding copyright as perpetual, and his quest of money and patronage.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 84 , Issue 3 , May 1969 , pp. 501 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1969

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References

1 M alone Society Collections (Oxford, 1907–65), vi, 55–56.

2 W[alter] W. Greg, Bibliography of the English Printed Drama to the Restoration (London, 1939–59), i, 61.

3 David E. Baker, Biographia Dramatica, new ed. (London, 1782), ii, 155,429.

4 Thomas R. Lounsbury, The Text of Shakespeare (New York, 1906), pp. 145–152.

5 Gamaliel Bradford, Jr., “‘The History of Cardenio’,” Nation, lxxxviii (1909), 328; expanded in “The History of Cardenio,” MLN, xxv (1910), 51–56.

6 Paul Bertram, Shakespeare and ‘The Two Noble Kinsmen‘ (New Brunswick, N. J., 1965), p. 188.

7 E[dmund] K. Chambers, William Shakespeare (Oxford, 1930), i, 540.

8 Besides Bradford's articles, see Walter Graham, ed., Double Falsehood (Cleveland, Ohio, 1920), pp. 2–24; E[rnest] H. C. Oliphant, The Plays of Beaumont and Fletcher (New Haven, Conn., 1927), pp. 282–302; Kenneth Muir, Shakespeare as Collaborator (London, 1960), pp. 148–160; and Clifford Leech, The John Fletcher Plays (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), pp. 150–153.

9 Graham, pp. 5–6.

10 I have checked the first editions of these translations, reissues of Shelton (1620, 1652, 1675, and 1725), Stevens (1706), and Ozell (1725), and the translation in Samuel Croxall's Select Collection of Novels and Histories, 2nd ed. (London, 1729), i, 310–344. Gayton's translation appears in his Pleasant Notes upon Don Quixote (London, 1654), pp. 130–140, 160–167, 170–176. For opportunities to examine many rare books and periodicals, I thank the Furness Memorial Library and Rare Book Room of the University of Pennsylvania Library, the Rosenbach Foundation, the Library Company of Philadelphia, the Folger Shakespeare Library, and the Library of Congress. Theobald's Happy Captive (1741) is vaguely indebted to Bk. iv of Don Quixote, Pt. i.

11 Alexander Pope, The Dunciad, ed. James Sutherland, 3rd ed. (London, 1963), p. 181 (note on Dunciad Variorum, iii, 272).

12 Alfred B. Harbage, “Elizabethan-Restoration Palimpsest,” MLR, xxxv (1940), 297.

13 Emmett L. Avery, The London Stage, Part II (Carbon-dale, 111., 1960), i, 233.

14 Aaron Hill, The Insolvent (London, 1758), “Preface”; Works (London, 1753), ii, 312–319.

15 [Charles Gildon, ed.], The Works of Mr. William, Shake-spear. Volume the Seventh (London, 1710), p. ii. For publication date, see Samuel H. Monk, “Introduction” to Nicholas Rowe, Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1948), p. 3.

16 [Charles Gildon, ed.], The Works of Mr. William Shakespear. Volume the Ninth (London, 1714).

17 Daily Courant, 25 Aug. 1710; 30 Aug. 1710.

18 Post Boy, 16–19 Sept. 1710; Post Man, 16–19 Sept. 1710.

19 Harbage, xxxv, 310–318.

20 Gerard Langbaine, Jr. [and Charles Gildon], The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets (London, 1699), p. 32. Aubrey's earlier account was not printed until much later.

21 [John Mottley], A Compleal List Of all the English Dramatic Poets, appended to Thomas Whincop, Scanderbeg (London, 1747), p. 294.

22 Richard F. Jones, Lewis Theobald (New York, 1919), p. 327.

23 Jones, pp. 302–305, 298.

24 Arthur H. Nethercot, Sir William D'avenant (Chicago, 1938), p. 2.

25 John C. Reed, “Humphrey Moseley, Publisher,” Oxford Bibliog. Soc. Proceedings and Papers, ii, Pt. ii (1929), 64.

26 John Freehafer, “The Formation of the London Patent Companies in 1660,” TN, xx (1965), 26–27.

27 “Eu. Hood” (Joseph Haslewood), “Fly Leaves,” Gentleman's Magazine, xciv (March 1824), 223.

28 James Boswell, London Journal, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New York, 1950), p. 312.

29 Bruce W. Bugbee, Genesis of American Patent and Copyright Law (Washington, D. C, 1967), p. 55.

30 Lewis Theobald, ed., The Works of Shakespeare (London, 1733), iv, 110, n.

31 Theobald, iv, 20, n.; John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1817), ii, 623.

32 Eduard Castle, “Theobalds ‘Double Falsehood,‘,” Archiv fur das Studium der neueren Sprachen, clxix (1936), 196–197.

33 Nonetheless, twentieth-century commentators have found ample evidence that a Jacobean original underlies Double Falshood. In addition, the fact that a brief speech of Julio is printed as verse (i.ii.27–28), the verse fossils in Henriquez' speeches (ii.i.21–28, 32–50), and a rimed couplet at the end of a speech supposedly in prose (ii.i.51–52) suggest that at one time the dialogue in these places was in verse. Note also the Elizabethan syllabic length (with dieresis) given to “Imagination” (i.ii.7), “Suspicions” (iii.iii.4), and “Possession” (iii.iii.29).

34 John Dryden, Essays, ed. W. P. Ker (Oxford, 1906), i, 81.

35 [John Genest], Some Account of the English Stage (Bath, 1832), iii, 34. 36 Bertram, p. 192, 192n.

37 John Genest's signed copy of The Tragedy of King Richard the II.... Alter'd from Shakespear, By Mr. Theobald (London, 1720) is preserved at the Furness Memorial Library of the Univ. of Pennsylvania.

38 For details of Theobald's alteration, see George C. Branam, Eighteenth-Century Adaptations of Shakespearean Tragedy (Berkeley, Calif., 1956), pp. 27–29, 37–41, 81–83, 140–141, 161–163.

39 These considerations help to explain why Chambers, although not denying the possibility of Shakespearean authorship—in an uninspired mood—could not find in Double Falshood “a single passage which compels a belief in Shakespeare” (i, 542).

40 Theobald, i, xlvi-xlvii (Preface). Theobald here espouses an idea which he may have derived from Bishop Warburton.

41 Richard Farmer, An Essay on the Learning of Shake-speare, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 1767), p. 28.

42 [Benjamin Victor], Memoirs of the Life of Barton Booth (London, 1733), pp. 13–14.

43 Anon., The Life of that Excellent Tragedian Barton Booth (London, 1733), pp. 16–17.

44 HMC, Report on MSS of... the Duke of Portland (London, 1891–1931), vi, 20.

45 Avery, ii, 1027; Arthur H. Scouten, The London Stage, PartHI (Carbondale, I11., 1961), ii, 917. Jones, p. 106, erroneously states that Theobald does not refer to Double Falshood in his letters to Warburton. See Nichols, ii, 212, 212n., 222.

46 Nichols, ii, 617.

47 Hood, xciv (March 1824), 223; Jones, pp. 157–160.

48 Leonard Schwartzstein, “The Text of ‘The Double Falsehood’,” N&Q, cxcix (1954), 471–472; Muir, pp. 154–159.

49 Schwartzstein, pp. 471–472.

50 Muir, pp. 155–156.

51 Muir, pp. 154–155, discusses the echoes of Hamlet.

52 See Bradford, Nation, lxxxviii, 328; MLN, xxv, 51–56; Graham, pp. 16–23; Oliphant, pp. 286–302; Muir, pp. 152–154.

53 Bradford, MLN, xxv, 53.

54 Suggested by Malone in Baker, ii, 92.

55 Suggested by Farmer, p. 29.

56 Walter W. Greg, ed., Henslowe Papers (London, 1907), pp. 65–66.

57 HMC, vi, 20.

58 Bertram, p. 188.

59 Daily Post, 11 Dec. 1727; 12 Dec. 1727.

60 The play was produced on 13 Dec. and the dedication is dated 21 Dec. 1727.

61 Whitehall Evening Post, 12–14 March 1728.

62 Alexander Pope, Correspondence, ed. George Sherburn (Oxford, 1956), iv, 102. In the preface to his second edition of Shakespeare (London, 1728), i, xxi, Pope adds to his list of spurious plays of Shakespeare “a thing call'd the Double Falshood, [which] cannot be admitt'd as his.”

63 [Benjamin] Victor, The History of the Theatres of London and Dublin (London, 1761), ii, 107; David E. Baker, The Companion to the Playhouse (London, 1764), i, s.v. “the double falshood.”

64 W[alter] W. Greg, The Shakespeare First Folio (Oxford, 1955), p. 99.

65 Harry Ransom, The First Copyright Statute (Austin, Texas, 1956), p. 112.

66 Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers (London, 1875–94), i, 2.

67 Arber, iii, 204.

68 James Fitzmaurice-Kelly, “Introduction” to Miguel de Cervantes, The History of Don Quixote, tr. Thomas Shelton (London, 1896), i, I-lii.

69 Victor, History, ii, 107.

70 Ransom, p. 110.

71 H. L. Ford, Shakespeare 1700–1740 (Oxford, 1935), p. 141, states that the second edition of Double Falshood is “a reissue” except for the title page; this is true of the text, but not of the preface and dedication.

72 For such phrases, see the title pages of STC 7126, 18968, 19302, 21724, and 25908, all of which were published under authors' patents.

73 For other examples, see STC 6249, 18205, and 19166.

74 Giles E. Dawson, “The Copyright of Shakespeare's Dramatic Works,” Studies in Honor of A. H. R. Fairchild, ed. Charles T. Prouty (Columbia, Mo., 1946), pp. 29–31.

75 Dawson, p. 27.

76 W. C. Day, Behind the Footlights (London, 1885), pp. 62–64; London Times (22 Nov. 1847), p. 4.

77 Dunciad, p. 237. 78 Nichols, ii, 617.

79 Dunciad, pp. 252, 252n.

80 Hood, xciv (Feb.-June 1824), 136, 222–223, 318–319, 410–411, 512–513.

81 Hood, xciv (June 1824), 513. Perhaps to aid in selling remaining copies of Double Falshood, Watts published as part of the second edition of Samuel Croxall's Select Collection of Novels and Histories (1729) a version, after Shelton, of the Cardenio story, described as “A Tale upon which the Plan of a Posthumous Play, called Double Falsehood, was written originally by W. Shakespeare” (i, 310–344).

82 Chambers, i, 542.