Shakespeare and Cervantes: The Strange Case of Cardenio September 25, 2008

Near the end of his career, Shakespeare wrote three plays with a younger colleague, John Fletcher. Two of their collaborations, Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, survive, but Cardenio—though performed on several occasions in 1613 and registered for print in the mid-17th century—does not. As the title of the lost play suggests, Shakespeare and Fletcher evidently took their plot from the tragicomic story of Cardenio as it is episodically recounted in Part One of Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1605). Cervantes’ novel, translated into English by Thomas Shelton and published in 1612, have been a literary sensation in London in 1613, when Shakespeare and Fletcher’s play was first performed. Greenblatt is interested in the cultural mobility exposed by this encounter of two great Renaissance writers, a mobility he has explored in a variety of ways, including authoring a modern version of the play.

Official Website: http://chicago.cervantes.es/FichasCultura/Ficha50798_47_2.htm