Double Falsehood: Shakespeare’s New Play?

As a new edition of Double Falsehood is published by the Arden Shakespeare in the UK and the US, news about a new play by Shakespeare is all over the news. There are even reports that the Royal Shakespeare Company will soon be performing a version of the play. But is it really Shakespeare’s? Here’s a quick version of its history.

In the winter of 1612-13 and again the following summer, Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men, were paid by the court of King James for acting a play called Cardenio by Shakespeare and John Fletcher, with whom Shakespeare collaborated on his last three plays. From the title, we can assume that the play was based on a subplot of Cervantes’ novel Don Quixote, about a man named Cardenio who nearly loses his love Lucinda after his friend Ferdinand obtains the favor of Lucinda’s father first. Ferdinand’s plans are disrupted, however, when it is revealed that he had previously become engaged to a second woman, Dorothea. Don Quixote had been translated into English in 1612.

The play doesn’t appear to have been performed again, and though the rights to publish the play were acquired in the 1650s by a printer, Humphrey Mosely, it was never published. Instead, the play wasn’t heard of again until 1727, when a writer and editor of Shakespeare’s plays named Lewis Theobald claimed to have discovered an unknown Shakespeare manuscript.

Theobald claimed to possess three copies of the manuscript. It seems likely that at least one of these manuscript copies was one that had belonged to William Davenant, a playwright and theatre manager from the Restoration period. Davenant was Shakespeare’s godson and claimed actually to be Shakespeare’s illegitimate son; during the Restoration, he set himself up as the protector of Shakespeare’s tradition and adapted many of Shakespeare’s plays for the Restoration stage, often dramatically altering the original texts. If Davenant or his scribe did adapt Cardenio, his version of the play was never performed. But his manuscripts were passed to his theatre manager, Thomas Betterton. Theobald claimed to have a manuscript that had belonged to Betterton.

The title page for Double Falsehood in 1728.

Theobald adapted the play he found once more. It seems likely that Theobald followed a procedure similar to his adapation of Richard II, in which he deleted most of the first two acts, simplified characters and plot, and in the end retained only about a quarter of Shakespeare’s original language. So if Double Falsehood is Cardenio, it is at the remove of two rounds of adaptation and extensive rewriting. Someone–either Davenant or Theobald–even changed the title of the play and the names of all the characters.

Theobald’s adaptation premiered at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on December 13th 1727. Newspaper notices ahead of the premier called upon audiences to render a decision on the question of its authorship.

Theobald published his version of the play in 1728. At the time, it was generally seen as a hoax. Lines from the play that were admired as sounding Shakespearean were claimed by Theobald as his own invention. The play was largely forgotten except by a few Shakespeare scholars. The new edition, edited by Professor Brean Hammond, is the first time the play has been available in a popular edition since Thebald’s edition of 1728. The text as it exists today might have a Shakespeare and Fletcher original behind it, but if it does, it is a text adapted first by Davenant and then again by Theobald. Hammond calls Double Falsehood the great-grandchild of the early modern play Cardenio. But that’s as close to new Shakespeare material as we can get after 400 years.

Purchase the new edition of Double Falsehood on Amazon.

Thanks to Jennifer Young for her help on this article.