Cardenio E-Book

William Shakespeare

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Set in the heat and dust of Andalusia in seventeenth-century Spain, Cardenio is the story of a friendship betrayed, with all the elements of a thriller: disguise, dishonour and deceit. A woman is seduced, a bride is forced to the altar, and a man runs mad among the mountains of the Sierra Morena. The history of the play is every bit as thrilling, and this text is the result of a masterful act of literary archaeology by the Royal Shakespeare Company's Chief Associate Director Gregory Doran, to re-imagine a previously lost play by Shakespeare. Based on an episode in Cervantes' Don Quixote, the play known as Cardenio by Shakespeare and John Fletcher was performed at court in 1612. A copy of their collaboration has never been found; however, it is claimed that Double Falshood by Lewis Theobald is an eighteenth-century adaptation of it. Since Theobald's play misses out some crucial scenes in the plot, Doran has turned to the Cervantes original to supply the missing episodes, using the original English translation by Thomas Shelton (1612) that Fletcher and Shakespeare must themselves have read. Cardenio re-opened the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company's fiftieth birthday season in 2011. 'an extraordinary and theatrically powerful piece... the play works beautifully' - Guardian

Leseprobe

CARDENIO

Shakespeare’s Lost Play Re-imagined

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Original Production

Characters

Act One

Act Two

Act Three

Act Four

Act Five

A Letter to Lewis Theobald

‘Woods, Rocks and Mountains’

About the Authors

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

CARDENIO

Shakespeare’s ‘Lost Play’ Re-imagined

AfterDouble Falshood; or The Distrest Lovers by Lewis Theobald (1727)

Apparently revised from a manuscript in the handwriting of John Downes and conceivably adapted by Sir William Davenant for Thomas Betterton fromThe History of Cardenio by Mr Fletcher and Shakespeare (1612) performed at Court in 1612/13

Which may have been based on an episode inDon Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes which was translated into English by Thomas Shelton First published in 1612

And here adapted and directed by Gregory Doran for the Royal Shakespeare Company With additional Spanish material supplied by Antonio Álamo via a literal translation by Duncan Wheeler and developed in rehearsal by the original cast

Introduction

Theatre is the most collaborative of the arts; and collaboration has been the key note of Cardenio since William Shakespeare and his younger colleague John Fletcher decided to write a play together, based on an episode in the Spanish best-seller, DonQuixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, first published in England in 1612, in a translation by Thomas Shelton.

Cardenio somehow avoided inclusion in either the First Folio of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623, or of Humphrey Moseley’s publication of Beaumont and Fletcher’s plays in 1647. But Moseley did register The History of Cardenio by Mr Fletcher. & Shakespeare (sic) for publication in 1653, in the Stationers’ Register. Perhaps Sir William Davenant (who promoted the rumour that he was Shakespeare’s illegitimate child) had a manuscript of this play, and may have prepared it for performance by his company after the Restoration, with Thomas Betterton, the leading tragedian of his time, as Cardenio himself. Davenant’s company had done adaptations of the two other Shakespeare/Fletcher collaborations we know about: The Two Noble Kinsmen and All is True (Henry VIII); so why not Cardenio?

The prompter to that company, one John Downes, retired in 1706, and it seems a manuscript copy of Cardenio, in his handwriting, fell into the hands of one Lewis Theobald. Theobald, who had trained in the law, had tried his hand at everything: classical translation, journalism, poetry, opera librettos and even a novel, and was scratching a living writing the new popular pantomimes at the theatre in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. But he finally came to prominence by challenging the great poet of the Augustan Age, Alexander Pope, for his sloppy inaccurate edition of Shakespeare. And Theobald’s follow-up move, designed to secure his place in the literary pantheon, was his adaptation of that Cardenio manuscript, which he called Double Falshood, or The Distrest Lovers. It was a success. It ran for ten consecutive performances at Drury Lane Theatre.

Back in 2003, when I was directing Fletcher’s The TamerTamed, his sequel to The Taming of the Shrew, we got a group of actors together to read Theobald’s Double Falshood. We all agreed that it had great potential, but that the plotting (particularly at the beginning) was convoluted, and it was missing several scenes. At which point, we put the play aside. However, after re-reading Shelton’s 1612 translation of DonQuixote, I realised that those missing scenes might be re-imagined from the very same source material that Shakespeare and Fletcher must have used.

In 2007 on a visit to Spain with The Canterbury Tales, I was introduced by the Almagro Festival director, Emilio Hernandez, to Antonio Álamo, a writer and the director of the Lope de Vega Theatre in Seville. Antonio is a Cervantes nut, so we inevitably discussed Cardenio. He alerted me to what an extraordinary story it is, and made me realise just how much Theobald (who admitted he was adapting it for the tastes and sensibilities of the London audience of his time) had removed: namely, much of the psychological complexity and rigour of the original. We would need to replace Cardenio’s ‘cojones’!

Further discussion with Spanish colleagues ensued. I travelled to Cordoba to accept a Bellas Artes medal, on behalf of the RSC, from the King of Spain (Laurence Boswell’s brilliant Spanish Golden Age Season had visited Madrid, as had my own production of Coriolanus: both had emanated from the RSC). In Alicante at a Cervantes/Shakespeare conference organised by Professor Jose Manuel Gonzalez de Sevilla, further discussions took place – and finally a visit to Seville with Antonio Álamo, to understand the significance of the story in Spain. Out of this visit came another draft, which we workshopped with the Hamlet company in 2008, and another draft was further developed at an RSC residency in Michigan, under the aegis of Professor Ralph Williams. Here we worked with Hispanic-American actors from the LAByrinth theatre company in New York. So, for example, Cardenio was played by a Mexican, and Don Bernardo by an actor from Los Angeles, which certainly revealed and rooted the play’s Spanish temperament.

Throughout the process, we poured over other seventeenth-century versions of the Cardenio story, by Pichou, by de Castro, by Bouscal, and by Thomas D’Urfey. But in an attempt to provide some sense of integrity to the piece, where extra lines were needed, I tried to limit myself to plundering only those Jacobean plays in which John Fletcher had drawn upon Cervantes.

Cardenio is the first new production in the Swan Theatre, since the RSC’s Transformation Project (another collaborative effort if ever there was one). The Swan opened twenty-five years ago with Fletcher and Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen, so it is only fitting that we return with another play they worked on together, although this time the list of writing credits has grown to the length of a Hollywood blockbuster, with Shakespeare, Cervantes, Fletcher, Shelton, Theobald, etc.

Thanks to everyone who collaborated on this project: to Jeanie O’Hare, our company dramaturg, for her eagle eye; to Jeremy Adams, our indefatigable producer, who has nurtured the project throughout; to Ann Bateson our Spanish ‘fixer’; to all the actors who worked on the various workshops; to Réjane Collard for arranging various literal translations for us; to Emilio Hernandez, to Antonio Álamo, to Professor Jose Manuel Gonzalez, and to all our Spanish colleagues; to Chris Hickey, who was Head of the British Council in Madrid, for his advice; to Professor Ralph Williams and the folk at Michigan University; to Gordon McMullan who first steered me towards Fletcher; to Professor Brean Hammond who edited the Arden edition of Double Falshood; and to Professor Tiffany Stern, who wisely cautioned scepticism.

And finally to Lewis Theobald, for excavating his ‘dear relic’.

Gregory Doran Stratford-upon-Avon Lady Day, 2011

Cardenio was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 14 April 2011. The cast was as follows:

DUKE RICARDO OF AGUILARChristopher EttridgePEDROSimeon MooreFERNANDOAlex HassellGERARDOChiké OkonkwoDON BERNARDONicholas DayLUSCINDALucy Briggs-OwenDUENNALiz CrowtherDON CAMILLOChristopher GodwinCARDENIOOliver RixDOROTEAPippa NixonMAIDMatti HoughtonMASTER SHEPHERDTimothy SpeyerFIRST SHEPHERDMichael Grady-HallSECOND SHEPHERDFelix HayesPRIESTChristopher ChiltonCITIZENHarry MyersNUNMaya BarcotMUSICIANSJavier Macías,Luis Carro Barquero,Nicholas Lee, James JonesDirectorGregory DoranDesignerNiki TurnerLighting DesignerTim MitchellComposerPaul EnglishbySound DesignerMartin SlavinMovement DirectorMichael AshcroftFight DirectorTerry KingCompany Text and Voice WorkJacquie CragoAssistant DirectorBen BrynmorMusic DirectorBruce O’NeilDramaturgJeanie O’Hare

Characters

DUKE RICARDO OF AGUILAR

PEDRO, his son

FERNANDO, his younger son

CARDENIO

DON CAMILLO, his father

LUSCINDA, beloved of Cardenio

DON BERNARDO, her father

GERARDO

DOROTEA, a wealthy farmer’s daughter

DOROTEA’S MAID

A CITIZEN

PRIEST

DUENNA

MASTER OF THE FLOCK

FIRST SHEPHERD

SECOND SHEPHERD

NOVICE, in the convent

ACT ONE

Scene One

The Palace of DUKE RICARDO.

Enter the DUKE and PEDRO.

PEDRO.

My gracious father, this unwonted strain

Visits my heart with sadness.

DUKE.

Why, my son?

Making my death familiar to my tongue

Digs not my grave one jot before the date.

I’ve worn the garland of my honours long,

And would not leave it withered to thy brow,

But flourishing and green; worthy the man,

Who, with my Dukedoms, heirs my better glories.

PEDRO.

This praise, which is my pride, spreads me with blushes.

DUKE.

Think not that I can flatter thee, my Pedro;

Or let the scale of love o’er-poise my judgement.

Like the fair glass of retrospection, thou

Reflect’st the virtues of my early youth;

Making my old blood mend its pace with transport:

While fond Fernando, thy irregular brother,

Sets the large credit of his name at stake,

A truant to my wishes, and his birth.

His taints of wildness hurt our nicer honour,

And call for swift reclaim.

PEDRO.

I trust my brother

Will, by the vantage of his cooler wisdom

Erewhile redeem the hot escapes of youth,

And court opinion with a golden conduct.

DUKE.

Be thou a prophet in that kind suggestion!

But I, by fears weighing his unweighed course,

Interpret for the future from the past.

And strange misgivings, why he hath of late

By importunity, and strained petition,

Wrested our leave of absence from the court,

Awake suspicion. Thou art inward with him;

And haply, from the bosom’d trust, canst shape

Some formal cause to qualify my doubts.

PEDRO.

Why he hath pressed this absence, sir, I know not;

But that he tells me he would have the means

To purchase certain horse, that like him well,

And asks Cardenio, good Camillo’s son,

A youth well tried in noble horsemanship,

To help him in this latest enterprise.

This Cardenio he encountered first in France,

And lovingly commends him to my favour.

DUKE.

I have upon Fernando’s strong request

Sent for Cardenio to come to court.

Do thou assay to mould him, my dear son,

An honest spy upon thy brother’s riots.

Make us acquainted when the youth arrives.

Exeunt.

Scene Two

The Town of Almodovar.

Enter LUSCINDA and CARDENIO.

CARDENIO.

Luscinda, love,

Urge not suspicions of what cannot be;

You deal unkindly; mis-becomingly,

I’m loath to say: for all that waits on you