Ah, I love a nice Shakespeare pun. I’ve heard back from the Royal Shakespeare Company on the very curious press release found in a Spanish publication about their working on a “Shakespeare play about a character from Don Quixote.” The answer? The project will be based on Lewis Theobald’s eighteenth century adaptation of a manuscript of Cardenio, the original source, Thomas Shelton’s 1612 translation of Don Quixote as well as the original Spanish version of the episode in Don Quixote. So this is not an academic or literal find – but hopefully will be a theatrical find – a collaboration between Spanish and British artists to eventually bring a production to the stage of Cervantes’ story of Cardenio – via William Shakespeare – of which both great authors might have been proud. (Emphasis mine.)  So, there you go.  Everybody go back about your business, nothing to see here. I’m curious, though, about the wording in the article which said:  “The piece has been lost for three centuries after a fire at the Globe Theatre, but now the Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gregory Doran, has said they have managed to confirm the authenticity of the piece. It was written with the dramatist John Fletcher, and had been performed twice by the King’s Men Company in 1613.”  It seems to be that “managed to confirm the authenticity of the piece” is new information, more than just doing another project based on Theobald’s Double Falshood, which has been done for years. I’ve written back asking if they have any more to say on that particular question.  Now that I see it in better context I think that perhaps the author of the article was unfamiliar with the history of Cardenio versus Theobald’s Double Falshood, and wrote about it as if this was a new discovery. Update: The official word is “there is nothing new to add to the authentication debate…some facts may have been slightly lost in translation.”  Gregory Doran will be working on his project on the assumption that Theobald’s work is, in fact, based on the Shakespeare/Fletcher original. Thanks very much to Nada Zakula of the RSC Press Office for getting back to me!      

Look look look what I found!  The text of “Double Falshood; or, The Distrest Lovers”.  The Theobald play in question, which could indeed be the lost Cardenio (or at least a revised and adapted version).  Whether it is or isn’t, I certainly wasn’t going to pass up the chance to read it! I don’t know who this “jwkennedy” person is who did the transcribing work, but he’s my new BFF :).  Thanks!

Over at “The Hamlet Weblog” the author “read a rumour about this over the weekend” (hmmm, I wonder where he read it?) and dug up an actual press release from the Royal Shakespeare Company.  His theory, unfortunate though it may be, is that they’re really just talking about the Theobald version which has been known about for quite some time.  This is a script from the 18th century called The Double Falsehood which was “revised and adapted” from the Shakespeare original.  A little more googling found me this link on Shakespeare Apocrypha that describes the play thusly:  “this was initially regarded quite skeptically, but is now being looked upon more favorably following recent analysis and research, beginning with Stefan Kukowski in 1991.” I also found a blog post from June 2006, stating that the RSC has listed Cardenio among the complete works to be performed back then.  So now I’m not really sure what the “new” thing is anymore.

I have this weird memory about high school Shakespeare class.  I can’t seem to find evidence for it in Google so I’m wondering if I throw it out here, if someone will perhaps know what I’m talking about. We were studying Othello.  We had our regular copy of the play, but also for some reason I recall that we had a photocopied version of some key scenes.  There is a quote from Othello about Desdemona where he says, “She loved me for the dangers I had passed, and I loved her that she did pity them.”  Fair enough.  But here’s the thing.  I remember that in one of the two versions we had, it clearly said “that she did not pity them” (emphasis mine).  I have vivid memories of pointing this out to the teacher and trying to make the argument that this said two very different things about Desdemona’s character.  We had gotten a brief taste of the whole “what did Shakespeare really write” argument with Hamlet’s “too, too solid/sullied flesh” speech, so I remember wondering if I had stumbled into another one.  I don’t recall where the debate went, although I think that she basically blew me off. And that’s where I’m stuck.  No amount of googling will tell me if there is a recognized edition of Othello that contains the line “that she did not pity them.”  So I’m left wondering if I imagined the whole thing.   Does anybody have any clue what I’m talking about?  

Just about a year ago I mentioned Stage Beauty, and people chimed in to tell me how awesome it is.  The 2004 production stars Billy Crudup and Claire Danes in what could be called “Shakespeare In Love meets Othello.”

In the more well-known production, a woman is forbidden from playing a woman’s role, so she masquerades as a man in order to play a woman.  In Stage Beauty the king has ruled that women must play the women’s roles, which leaves Crudup, the greatest Desdemona of his time, discovering that he has played a woman for so long that he is incapable of playing a man.

I am really glad I watched this, I greatly enjoyed it.  I can’t say I’m  a huge fan of Othello, but really the only Shakespeare in this play was the death scene of Desdemona, they did that over and over again.  And that’s a good scene.  The acting from both Danes and Crudup was tremendous.

The theme of gender and identity was pretty complex.  The scene where Crudup is put to the test (he claims that it is so easy to act a man’s part that there’s no challenge) is absolutely riveting.  On the other side you’ve got Danes, the first female to ever act on stage, who has no idea what it means to “act female” because the best she can do is her impression of what she has seen the men do.

The final scene had me on the edge of my seat.  Maybe that’s because the movie was that good, or maybe that’s because I’d been waiting the whole movie to see some real Shakespeare performed(*).  Who cares,  I got what I wanted.  Great movie.  Highly recommended.

(*) Ok, I’m a bit of a geek.  There’s a scene halfway through the movie where Crudup begs the king to reverse his decision and let him act again.  He cannot play a man’s role because there is no artistry in it, he says.  Claire Danes suggests that he demonstrate how he can act a man’s role as a demonstration of his command of the stage, so that the king will see that a true actor can play any role and thus be convinced.  The king says, “Yes.  Perform a soliloquoy that displays all that is bold and strong and masculine in a man.  Let’s see you as Othello.”  I got goosebumps and sat up in my seat just anticipating that.  (The scene that follows, by the way, is lousy Shakespeare but beautiful acting.)