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Shakespeare, Lost and Found

May 14, 2008

How could it be that a Shakespeare play currently being performed at the American Repertory Theatre was actually written not by The Bard, but by two men of Harvard?

The play is Cardenio, a “lost play” by Shakespeare that was performed twice in 1613, but then went missing. The coauthors are Shakespeare scholar and Cogan University Professor Stephen Greenblatt and playwright Charles Mee ’60.

In the absence of the original text, Greenblatt and Mee started with scholarly research on Cardenio’s contents: it took its basic plot and main character’s name from Don Quixote; a Shakespeare editor of the eighteenth century claimed a play he wrote himself, and whose text survives, was based on Cardenio. But they add their own modern-day riffs on the play’s theme of jealousy and mistrust in love.

Asked how much Shakespeare is in the play, Greenblatt tells the Boston Globe, “A lot, and nothing… There is nothing directly quoted from him, but there are a lot of Shakespeare’s devices.”

Friends of Harvard Magazine hosts an event with Greenblatt at the Charles Hotel before this Thursday’s performance; if you’re in Cambridge for Commencement or a reunion, you might also take in a show then. (It runs through June 8.) If neither of those are options, the Globe story offers a nice introduction; also check out these articles on Greenblatt from the Harvard Magazine archives:

The Mysterious Mr. Shakespeare tells more about his work.

In the essay Writing as Performance, Greenblatt offers his thoughts on what makes good scholarly writing.