Cardenio

Long sought by scholars as the Holy Grail of world literature, and masquerading under the censor's makeshift title, "The second maiden's tragedy," this lost play was discovered by Charles Hamilton, a forensic document examiner and literary historian.

Bringing together leading scholars, critics, and theatre practitioners, this collection of essays is devoted to 'The History of Cardenio', a play based on Don Quixote and said to have been written by Shakespeare and the young man who was taking his place, John Fletcher.

How should we read a text that does not exist, or present a playthe manuscript of which is lost and the identity of whose authorcannot be established for certain? Such is the enigma posed by Cardenio – a playperformed in England for the first time in 1612 or 1613 andattributed forty years later to Shakespeare (and Fletcher). Itsplot is that of a ‘novella’ inserted into Don Quixote,a work that circulated throughout the major countries of Europe,where it was translated and adapted for the theatre. In England,Cervantes’ novel was known and cited even before it wastranslated in 1612 and had inspired Cardenio. But there is more at stake in this enigma. This was a time when,thanks mainly to the invention of the printing press, there was aproliferation of discourses. There was often a reaction when it wasfeared that this proliferation would become excessive, and manywritings were weeded out. Not all were destined to survive, inparticular plays for the theatre, which, in many cases, were neverpublished. This genre, situated at the bottom of the literaryhierarchy, was well suited to the existence of ephemeral works.However, if an author became famous, the desire for an archive ofhis works prompted the invention of textual relics, the restorationof remainders ruined by the passing of time or, in order to fill inthe gaps, in some cases, even the fabrication of forgeries. Suchwas the fate of Cardenio in the eighteenth century. Retracing the history of this play therefore leads one to wonderabout the status, in the past, of works today judged to becanonical. In this book the reader will rediscover the malleabilityof texts, transformed as they were by translations and adaptations,their migrations from one genre to another, and their changingmeanings constructed by their various publics. Thanks to RogerChartier’s forensic skills, fresh light is cast upon themystery of a play lacking a text but not an author.

Cardenio, a play by William Shakespeare, has been missing since 1613. If recovered, it would be worth a fortune -- and the chance to re-introduce it to the world would be the chance of a lifetime. Dr. Deirdre Gunn, a scholar wanting to redeem her reputation -- and in need of money -- is offered that chance when an old classmate shows up and offers her a centuries-old manuscript that may just be the long-lost treasure. Deirdre is seldom able to resist temptation (either in the academic world or in the bedroom) and she takes the bait. But then a murder is committed, and Deirdre sets out to find the killer before the police pin the crime on her. She becomes entangled in a four-hundred-year-old mystery, and soon realizes her own life is in danger.

Don Quixote Explained the Reference Guide analyzes the Life and Times of the Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote De La Mancha. Specially, it scrutinizes the novel’s: 110 characters; 46 relationships; 19 themes; 12 groups of people; 30 obscure words; 23 Latin phrases; 4 major jokes; 4 scene sequences; 78 Quixotic poems; 17 Quixotic letters; 2 physical objects; 11 romantic relationships; and 35 regular relationships. At 161, 917 words, it is the most comprehensive, in-depth and insightful primer on the market. Perfect for serious academics writing books and/or journal articles about Don Quixote; useful for aspiring doctors writing “Don Quixote” dissertations; practical for budding scholars writing master’s theses about “Don Quixote”; convenient for college bachelor’s writing “Don Quixote” term papers; and handy for high school students writing “Don Quixote” essays for their teachers.

Set in the heat and dust of Andalusia in seventeenth-century Spain, Cardenio is the story of a friendship betrayed, with all the elements of a thriller: disguise, dishonour and deceit. A woman is seduced, a bride is forced to the altar, and a man runs mad among the mountains of the Sierra Morena. The history of the play is every bit as thrilling, and this text is the result of a masterful act of literary archaeology by the Royal Shakespeare Company's Chief Associate Director Gregory Doran, to re-imagine a previously lost play by Shakespeare. Based on an episode in Cervantes' Don Quixote, the play known as Cardenio by Shakespeare and John Fletcher was performed at court in 1612. A copy of their collaboration has never been found; however, it is claimed that Double Falshood by Lewis Theobald is an eighteenth-century adaptation of it. Since Theobald's play misses out some crucial scenes in the plot, Doran has turned to the Cervantes original to supply the missing episodes, using the original English translation by Thomas Shelton (1612) that Fletcher and Shakespeare must themselves have read. Cardenio re-opened the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's fiftieth birthday season in 2011.

The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life (1906) is a work of nonfiction by Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson. Written while Prime-Stevenson was living as an expatriate in Europe, The Intersexes is a defense of homosexuality grounded in scientific and historical research. Throughout his career, Prime-Stevenson sought to dispel falsehoods surrounding the history and social acceptance of homosexuality. Writing under the pseudonym Xavier Mayne, Prime-Stevenson took great care to insulate himself from the reprisal common to the period in which he worked. Despite his limited audience—copies of his works numbered in the hundreds—Prime-Stevenson is now recognized as a pioneering advocate for the rights of the LGBTQ community. “Between a protozoan and the most perfect development of the mammalia, we trace a succession of dependent intersteps...A trilobite is at one end of Nature's workshop: a Spinoza, a Shakespeare, a Beethoven is at the other. [...] Why have we set up masculinity and femininity as processes that have not perfectly logical and respectable inter-steps?” Seeking to defend homosexuality as a natural result of human evolution, Prime-Stevenson offers his theory of intersexes, of which he identifies two while leaving room for more to be defined in the future. To do so, he rejects the binary of masculine and feminine, both of which fail to describe the vast majority of humanity, in favor of a broader spectrum of sexual identity. Using the terms Uranian and Uraniad, which align with gay and lesbian respectively, Prime-Stevenson attempts to define these types, call attention to historical examples, and critique the societal condemnation and persecution of such individuals as “degenerate” or “criminal.” This groundbreaking study, perhaps the first to approach homosexuality from a scientific, historical, personal, and legal point of view, is recognized today as a landmark in queer literature by academics around the world. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson’s The Intersexes: A History of Similisexualism as a Problem in Social Life is a classic work of queer literature reimagined for modern readers.

Gregory Doran's account of his quest to re-discover Cardenio, the lost play written by Shakespeare and John Fletcher. A thrilling act of literary detection that takes him from the Bodleian Library in Oxford, via Cervantes' Spain to the stage of the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford. Fully illustrated throughout, Shakespeare's Lost Play tells a fascinating story, which, like the play itself, will engross Shakespeare buffs and theatregoers alike. Doran's much-praised production of Cardenio for the Royal Shakespeare Company marked the culmination of years spent searching for a famously 'lost' play co-authored by William Shakespeare. In this book, Doran takes us with him on his quest to unearth every extant clue and then into the rehearsal room as he pieces together a play unseen since its first performance in 1613. The result, as the Guardian attested, is 'an extraordinary and theatrically powerful piece, one that should both please audiences and keep academic scholars in work for years'.