Summary
As arguments swirl around Shakepeare's 'lost' play Stuart Kelly says that to understand his later work we must note the close links between the Bard and his Scottish king, James VI and ITHIS week, the prestigious Arden Shakespeare series has been making headlines. The third edition of the heavily annotated scholarly volumes will include an unfamiliar title: Double Falsehood, or The Distressed Lovers. This play was originally published in 1727 by Lewis Theobald - the pre-eminent Shakespeare scholar of the day - based, he claimed, on the manuscript of the prompter's copy of a lost Shakespeare play called Cardenio. Like most 18th-century writers, Theobald had no hesitation in sprucing up and "correcting" the Bard's plays - this was an age that rewrote King Lear to have a happy ending - and experts have regarded Double Falsehood with no small degree of suspicion. Its elevation into the ranks of the Shakespeare canon will be confirmed next year, when Gregory Doran, the chief associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, unveils a production of Cardenio, based on Theobald's play and the novel from which Shakespeare took the name "Cardenio", Don Quixote.
The past decade or so has seen a tentative move towards expanding the Shakespeare canon. Editors used to declare, loftily, that certain passages were far too badly written to be "genuine Shakespeare", and even whole plays were deemed spurious or, at best, juvenile. The tide has turned. Shakespeare, from the scraps of biography we have, was a busy, hands-on man of the theatre. What could be more likely than for the company's star author to add a soliloquy here, or write up a comic character there? Shakespeare collaborated with other writers: even Double Falsehood is a joint production with John Fletcher, with whom Shakespeare wrote The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. Gradually and tentatively the number of works by "Shakespeare" has increased. The Riverside Shakespeare included Edward III. The Oxford Shakespeare added speeches from Sir Thomas More.See the full content of this document
Extract
The King and I
Taking Shakespeare down from the empyrean heights of Mount Parnassus and putting him back into the hubbub, rivalries, splendour and squalor of the Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre, with its links to both the royal court and the penny-paying groundlings and stinkards, completely changes our understanding of him and his work.
Something as everyday a...See the full content of this document
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