William Shakespeare and John Fletcher: The History of Cardenio (1613)

The wedding scene (cf. Double Falshood Act III Scene 2)

[Image source: https://www.cervantesvirtual.com/portales/quijote_banco_imagenes_qbi/ficha_imagen/?id=5571

 . An illustration by Alphonse Lalauze (1838 - 1905) for Don Quixote, Ch 27.]

ACT I. SCENE I.

SCENE, A Royal Palace.

Duke Angelo, Roderick, and Courtiers.

RODERICK

My gracious Father, this unwonted Strain
Visits my Heart with Sadness.

DUKE

                                               Why, my Son?
Making my Death familiar to my Tongue
Digs not my Grave one Jot before the Date.
I've worn the Garland of my Honours long,
And would not leave it wither'd to thy Brow,
But flourishing and green; worthy the Man,
​Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better Glories.

RODERICK

This Praise, which is my Pride, spreads me with Blushes.

DUKE

Think not, that I can flatter thee, my Roderick;
Or let the Scale of Love o'er-poize my Judgment.
Like a fair Glass of Retrospection, Thou
Reflect'st the Virtues of my early Youth;
Making my old Blood mend its Pace with Transport:
While fond Henriquez, thy irregular Brother,
Sets the large Credit of his Name at Stake,
A Truant to my Wishes, and his Birth.
His Taints of Wildness hurt our nicer Honour,
And call for swift Reclaim.

RODERICK 

                                          I trust, my Brother
Will, by the Vantage of his cooler Wisdom,
E'er-while redeem the hot Escapes of Youth,
And court Opinion with a golden Conduct.

DUKE

Be Thou a Prophet in that kind Suggestion!
But I, by Fears weighing his unweigh'd Course,
Interpret for the Future from the Past.
And strange Misgivings, why he hath of late
By Importunity, and strain'd Petition,
Wrested our Leave of Absence from the Court,
Awake Suspicion. Thou art inward with him;
And, haply, from the bosom'd Trust can'st shape
Some formal Cause to qualify my Doubts.

RODERICK 

Why he hath press'd this Absence, Sir, I know not;
But have his Letters of a modern Date,
Wherein by Julio, good Camillo's Son,
(Who, as he says, shall follow hard upon;
And whom I with the growing Hour expect:)
He doth sollicit the Return of Gold
To purchase certain Horse, that like him well.
This Julio he encounter'd first in France,
And lovingly commends him to my Favour;
Wishing, I would detain him some few Days,
To know the Value of his well-placed Trust.
​
DUKE

O, do it, Roderick; and assay to mould him
An honest Spy upon thy Brother's Riots.
Make us acquainted when the Youth arrives;
We'll see this Julio, and he shall from Us
Receive the secret Loan his Friend requires.
Bring him to Court.

[Exeunt.]

(Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood, or The Distrest Lovers, Act I Scene 1)

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This opening scene is the one that feels most like Shakespeare. A typical Shakespeare opening, you might say, thinking e.g. of King Lear or The Winter's Tale. 

                                          worthy the Man,
Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better Glories.

I want to believe that Shakespeare wrote that. It means: something befitting the man who inherits not just my Dukedoms (Roderick being the eldest son) but what is better than worldly titles and possessions, i.e. whatever good principles I happen to possess (Roderick being the good son, in contrast to his wayward younger brother). 

It's just a normal low-key line of late Shakespeare, but how swift and intuitive! It's supercharged with meaning, yet it isn't weighty; a dream-language vivid with semi-emergent images. 

Still, this can't be altogether the scene as Shakespeare wrote it. For one thing, Julio was certainly Cardenio in 1613 (as in Don Quixote), but you can't simply retrofit the name "Cardenio" into the three lines that name "Julio". (And Henriquez was probably Fernando, but at least those names are metrically equivalent.)

And then there are the lines that look disquietingly like sub-quotations. I wish 

And court Opinion with a golden Conduct

didn't remind me so much of Macbeth's "I have bought / Golden opinions from all sorts of people" (I.7.35-36).

And I wish 

Making my old Blood mend its Pace with Transport

didn't remind me so much of 

This were to be new made when thou art old

And see thy blood warm when thou feelst it cold

(Sonnet 2). 

It isn't really Shakespeare's thing to half-quote his own work. But it might be the kind of thing Theobald would do to bolster his play's Shakespearian credentials. Start thinking like that and you soon suspect everything. 

And then there's the basic skimpiness of Double Falshood, the brief scenes, few characters, absence of spectacle, bare-bones realization. It's a glaring contrast with the unhurried plenitude of Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen. To produce something like this from something like that would entail not just slashing but rewriting. 

But I'm tempted to hear Shakespeare in these lines:

... Will, by the Vantage of his cooler Wisdom,

E'er-while redeem the hot Escapes of Youth...

Shakespeare does use "escape" in the sense of "escapade" elsewhere, though not often (Othello, Measure for Measure).

                        Thou art inward with him;
And, haply, from the bosom'd Trust can'st shape...

This too isn't how Shakespeare normally uses one of his favourite words, but the connection of "bosom" with sharing our secret thoughts (trusted confidante, bosom friend) appears in Julius Caesar, Measure for Measure, The Winter's Tale and Henry VIII.

But if we can't be very confident about which particular words go all the way back to the 1613 Cardenio, at least we can get a general sense of how Shakespeare and Fletcher reshaped the story they found in Don Quixote. 

The two characters in this opening scene are essentially their own invention: the duke and the elder son are very minor figures in the Cardenio story as told by Cervantes.

The denouement of the story (Don Quixote Ch 36) was going to be tricky to stage. Don Fernando's (= Henriquez's) change of heart occurs in the public forum of an inn: his own inner nobility, Luscinda's intention to die rather than yield to his will, Dorothea's inspiring assertion of her rights, the sympathies of the barber and Sancho Panza and even Fernando's own followers, and perhaps above all the sound moral advice of the good curate, all play a part in his conversion. Even so, it's a close-run thing: headstrong aristocrats like Don Fernando don't usually pay much heed to their social inferiors. The scene in the novel is elaborate, populous, long on speeches but light on dramatic turns or physical action. (On stage, if someone puts their hand to their sword you want them to draw it.)

Shakespeare and Fletcher decided, I suppose, that in the theatre Don Fernando's change of heart would be most credibly and swiftly effected by the shaming presence of his own father and brother. Instead of being the only aristocrat in the room he would stand exposed before his elders and betters. And that way, too, they could cleanly detach the Cardenio story from the world of Don Quixote: no La Mancha inn or curate or Sancho Panza would be required. 

Besides, their reworking brought to the fore the parent-child relationship that had driven so much Shakespearean drama, especially since King Lear. The parent was nearly always a father; the child nearly always of marriageable age. The History of Cardenio was going to be squarely grounded on the interplay between parental authority and parental love (both gift-love and need-love). It's surprising how relatively unimportant those themes are to the Cardenio story in Don Quixote. 

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I'm late to the party as far as Cardenio is concerned. I was finally reading Don Quixote for the first time, and here I encountered the madman in the Sierra Morena (Ch 23) who eventually names himself as Cardenio (Ch 24). Something stirred in my memory and I thought, Oh, is this the guy that Shakespeare's lost play was about? 

Fateful thought! Well, I soon came up to speed. There's a mass of information and speculation online about Cardenio, and within a few days I was reading Lewis Theobald's Double Falshood (1727), which I was thrilled to discover on Wikisource. 

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Double_Falshood;_or,_The_Distrest_Lovers

Every other Shakespeare fan seems to have opinions about this, so here, somewhat baldly, are mine. 

Double Falshood is distantly derived from a lost play written by Shakespeare and Fletcher in early 1613 and titled The History of Cardenio. The story came from Shelton's translation of the first part of Don Quixote, published the previous year. (Fletcher may have been able to read Don Quixote in Spanish, like Beaumont did, but Shakespeare wasn't big on Spanish.)

It was Shakespeare and Fletcher's first collaboration and it was a hit, as witnessed by two royal command performances. In pretty short order the same team followed it up with Henry VIII, then The Two Noble Kinsmen. Shakespeare's output had slowed after 1607, but with Fletcher he briefly resumed the high churn of his early years. 

A text of Cardenio came into Humphrey Moseley's hands and he registered it in 1653 but never published it. The text also came to Davenant's company and in the 1660s they adapted it for performance. (Did they perform it? I suppose so, but I'm surprised there's no record.) Sixty years later Lewis Theobald acquired manuscripts of that adaptation, which he then re-adapted to produce his Double Falshood in 1727; a success, apparently. He publicized it as by Shakespeare, to the derision of Alexander Pope and others. The extant play is short, and at some point the names were changed; Cardenio, for example, has become Julio. But even Pope admitted (privately) that Double Falshood seemed to be based on an old play. 

My opinions are thus of the romantic school, since I'm thinking that the extant Double Falshood does offer us a very distant, blurry and selective image of the lost Cardenio. Many would agree, but there's definitely no consensus. Brian Vickers, the king of Shakespeare authorship studies, doesn't buy it. It's easy to see arguments for both sides; the evidence is distinctly mixed. There's a mass of discussion online. 

Particularly enjoyable are the wide-ranging essays in The Quest for Cardenio (2012), ed. David Carnegie and Gary Taylor. You can only preview limited pages, but adroit Google searches will get you to the different parts. 

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZxHbuvet1XkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=cardenio+double+falsehood+taylor&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=cardenio%20double%20falsehood%20taylor&f=false

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Comparing Don Quixote and Double Falshood. 

The names

Fernando (first named in DQ Ch 23), Duke Ricardo's second son (Ch 24) = Henriquez in DF

Cardenio (first named in DQ Ch 24) = Julio in DF

Luscinda (first named in DQ Ch 24) = Leonora in DF

Luscinda's unnamed father (Ch 24) = Don Bernard in DF.

Cardenio's unnamed father (DQ Ch 24) = Camillo in DF. This is also the name of a character in The Winter's Tale.

Duke Ricardo (DQ Ch 24) = Duke Angelo in DF, but the name doesn't appear in any speeches, only the Dramatis Personae. Angelo is also the name of a major character in Measure for Measure.

The peasant girl (DQ Ch 24), later named as Dorothea in DQ Ch 28 = Violante in DF.

Fernando's unnamed elder brother (DQ Ch 27), later described as the marquis (DQ Ch 42) = Roderick in DF. The name isn't common in Jacobean or Restoration plays. You might expect Shakespeare and Fletcher to have preferred Rodrigo or Roderigo (as previously used in Othello), but Shakespeare was never too bothered with linguistically appropriate forms. Roderick was the name of a lost play from 1600, recorded by Henslowe (one suggestion is that it concerned Roderic, the last Visigothic king of Spain).

The plot

In DQ, the Cardenio story is told in dribs and drabs (mainly Chs 23, 24, 27, 28, 29 and 36). It's interleaved with other material mostly concerned with Don Quixote, but also e.g. the substantial tale of Anselmo, Lothario and Camilla. The Cardenio and Don Quixote stories have some crossover, e.g. at one point Don Quixote gets into an argument with Cardenio (about chivalric romances of course); the good curate who has come to the Sierra Morena to extricate Don Quixote also dispels Cardenio's madness and Dorothea's fears; Dorothea, Don Fernando, Luscinda and Cardenio all participate in the curate's schemes to induce Don Quixote to return home. In fact it's not until Ch 47 that they finally take their leave from the novel.

In DQ the Duke's offer to take Cardenio into service is genuine and unprompted. Cardenio meets Fernando for the first time while at the Duke's court. 

In DQ, when Fernando meets Cardenio  he has already seduced Dorothea with false promises of marriage and abandoned her. In DF Henriquez/Fernando rapes Violante/Dorothea when already set on pursuing Leonora/Luscinda and betraying Julio/Cardenio.

In DQ Don Fernando absents himself and Cardenio from court because he fears Cardenio will be duty-bound to inform the Duke his master about Fernando's misdeeds. He makes up a story about them going to buy horses, and they take up residence at the house of Cardenio's father, where it's through an incautious Cardenio that Fernando first meets Luscinda. In DF's rehandling (I.1) the Duke is wholly in the dark about Henriquez' absence and hasn't yet met Julio (Cardenio).

In DQ Cardenio has been afraid to ask his father for permission to marry Luscinda, and in fact takes up his pal Fernando's treacherous offer to do it for him. In DF Julio (Cardenio) does ask for and receive his father Camillo's consent. 

The unnamed elder brother in DQ is only briefly involved (as Fernando's accomplice in keeping Cardenio away from Luscinda). There's no suggestion he's a notably "good" brother and he plays no part in the denouement.

In DQ Cardenio at the wedding does not (as in DF) leap forth sword in hand to threaten others, but instead leaves in despair, intending to kill himself. 

In DQ Dorothea is threatened with rape by her own servant (she throws him off a precipice) as well as by the Master of the shepherds (Ch 28).

In DQ Dorothea's rich peasant father is named Clenardo (Ch 29). DF doesn't go into details about Violante's (Dorothea's) family, it only says she's of humble birth. 

In DQ (Ch 36) Fernando and his companions (not his brother) abduct Luscinda from the convent and arrive at an inn where they encounter Dorothea and Cardenio (along with the curate, Sancho Panza, etc). The resolution occurs when Dorothea calls heaven to witness that Fernando is her husband, and he is (rather slowly) brought round to accepting her claim, surrendering Luscinda to Cardenio. 

In DQ it's Dorothea who is the dynamic force; our sympathies are all with her and Luscinda. Cardenio is generally characterized as a bit feeble (something still discernible in DF's Julio). 

The theme of parental authority is less prominent in DQ than DF. 

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Cardenio and Luscinda

[Image source: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2011/apr/28/cardenio-review . Photo by Tristram Kenton from a 2011 RSC production. Cardenio was played by Oliver Rix and Luscinda by Lucy Briggs-Owen.]

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These notes on Shakespeare: full list