Cardenio is apparently the hottest play that no one’s ever read. Back in the spring, I blogged about a new production that imagines the story in a play-within-a-play context, juxtaposing the Don Quixote-inspired plot with a modern one. Now, a different Cardenio is scheduled for production and is eschewing the historical commentary of the last version. This one is a reconstruction that hopes to be as historically accurate as possible under the circumstances. Shakespearean scholar Gary Taylor has created his text based in part on a play that is believed to be an adaptation, and was penned more than a century after the original. In essence, Taylor un-adapted it.

Ostensibly, Taylor utilizes his thorough knowledge of Shakespeare’s writing style to achieve this literary feat. The result will no doubt divide critics who may have strong feelings about both the material utilized and the method of reconstruction. In the end, is this Shakespeare’s Cardenio or Taylor’s? Truthfully, it is neither one exclusively (particularly in consideration of the fact that original was most likely a collaboration rather than an exclusively Shakespearean work).

The article made me question whether or not this method could be applied to other texts, even ones that have no connection to Shakespeare? Could we reverse-adapt a twenty-first-century play as if Shakespeare had originally written it? If so, the tricky question of limited repertoire faced by many festivals and theatre companies would be virtually limited. Just imagine, a new “Shakespearean” play every season.

Shakespeare was a careless guy, or perhaps those who followed him were. Somewhere along the way, some of his plays were lost. How many plays were lost remains a matter of debate. Is Love’s Labours Won a lost sequel to Love’s Labours Lost or simply an alternative title to an existing play? Furthermore, of the lost plays, were all the sole creations of Shakespeare or were some of them collaborations. Since many believe The Bard’s later works were completed by other authors, it is possible that some of these missing stories fall into that category. It would explain their absence from folio copies and, ultimately, their disappearance into obscurity.

One such play is Cardenio, a play whose text has never been found (the story is believed to be based on the legend of Don Quixote). Many scholars argue that certain later plays are reconstructions or reworkings of Cardenio, but as always there is little conclusive evidence. None of this stopped playwrights Charles Mee and Stephen Greenblatt from tackling the work for a new production at the American Repertory Theatre. Using a framework device (gee, I wonder where they got that idea), the play depicts a wedding party reenacting the long-lost story. Mee and Greenblatt’s work is more of an historical interrogation than an attempt to recreate the work as exactly as possible. In many ways, their Cardenio is an examination of an intriguing phenomenon: the potential of rediscovering Shakespearean works that have never been read or performed.