Cardenio or the Second Maiden's Tragedy [Paperback]

William Shakespeare (Author), John Fletcher (Editor), Charles Hamilton (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1994

Recently identified by one of the world's leading handwriting experts, Shakespeare's lost masterpiece, coauthored with John Fletcher, involves a character from Don Quixote and features love gone awry, seduction, grave robbery, madness, ghosts, and murder. Original. IP.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

What's this--a new Shakespeare play? After a manner of speaking, yes, says autograph expert Charles Hamilton, who last year broke his claim that an untitled, anonymous manuscript in the British Museum Library is the handiwork of the bard of Avon--literally, for the handwriting in the manuscript is Shakespeare's. The play, says Hamilton, is the lost Cardenio and is known among scholars as The Second Maiden's Tragedy, a title that links it to The Maid's Tragedy by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, the latter of whom cowrote Henry VIII and The Two Noble Kinsmen, two late plays already in the Shakespearean canon. More than half the present volume consists of Hamilton's argument for accepting this play as a lost Shakespeare-Fletcher collaboration. Though Hamilton's exposition is well written and absorbing, particularly for fans of literary detection, the play's the thing that'll catch most readers. Written almost entirely in blank verse, it intertwines two plots borrowed from Cervantes' Don Quixote. One's a court tragedy in which a tyrant overthrows a king in order to claim his lady love and, when she chooses death in preference to him, proceeds to woo her corpse; the other's seamy domestic fare in which a husband tries to prove his wife's faithlessness by getting his best friend to seduce her. At the ends of both plots, nearly everyone's dead. More lurid than the late Shakespeare we prize--The Tempest and The Winter's Tale--the play is briskly paced, thoroughly comprehensible, worthy of staging, albeit its grand guignol aspects encourage an over-the-top, theater-of-cruelty approach rather than the romantic realism of most productions of Shakespeare. It's lesser Shakespeare, to be sure, but deep-dyed Shakespeareans will want to read it. Nay, they must. Ray Olson --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

"Charles Hamilton . . . is calling attention to one of the great achievements of the English dramatic imagination. The [Royal Shakespeare Company] or the National [Theater] should produce it. If they do, go see it; if they don't, go read it . . . " -- Welton Jones, The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Charles Hamilton . . . is calling attention to one of the great achievements of the English dramatic imagination. The [Royal Shakespeare Company] or the National [Theater] should produce it. If they do, go see it; if they don't, go read it. . . . -- Welton Jones, The San Diego Union-Tribune --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 275 pages
• Publisher: Marlowe & Co; 1st paperback ed edition (November 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569248869
• ISBN-13: 978-1569248867
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,150,667 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hamilton makes a solid prima facie case, July 8, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Cardenio or the Second Maiden's Tragedy (Paperback)

I recently asked a friend, a Shakespeare professor, what she thought about the argument advanced in this book, which I had read perhaps a year previously. I was surprised to hear her say she wasn't acquainted with it. Hamilton seems to demonstrate soundly that the text known to us as the "Second Maiden's Tragedy" could originally have been titled "Cardenio" (a known "lost" Shakespeare play) since its plot appears to be drawn from a character of that name in "Don Quixote" and the current title appears to have been a working title applied by the royal censor. More dramatically, Hamilton (a nationally prominent forensic handwriting authority) argues that the handwriting in the survivng original manuscript of this play and that of Shakespeare's will are by the same man. Given Hamilton's stature in that field alone, I'd have expected the book to have drawn more attention. I don't know if the arguments in the book have been subjected to sound refutation by someone more expert than me, but to this journeyman Shakespeare buff he makes a solid enough case to bear hearing out

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Proof that this play is NOT Cardenio, January 29, 2004

By 

Paul Kiser (Reno, NV USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Cardenio, Or, the Second Maiden's Tragedy (Hardcover)

Hamilton's arguments that the Second Maiden's Tragedy is really the lost Shakespeare play, Cardenio, are imaginative. Handwriting analysis is an interesting, but weak approach, as his methods and approach to this inexact art are at best questionable. Hamilton's suggestion that Shakespeare was credited for the play at one time is true; however, it is also true that scholars have determined that it was more likely that someone was trying to increase the value of the play by attributing it to Shakespeare.

Scholars have reviewed the play and have deemed it to be a play written by Middleton, not William Shakespeare. That would have been good enough to end most rationale assertions to the contrary, but Hamilton's attempt to reassert it as Shakespeare forces us to look closer.

First, as this play is a dramatization of Don Quixote De La Mancha, then how does the play coinside with the story line of Cardenio in Cervantes famous work. The answer? This play is about a different story line in the two volume, eight book work. Cardenio in Don Quixote is a separate story from the Second Maiden's story. That would make one seriously question why would someone dramatize a play about Cardenio but not use the story???

Second, and this is the killer for those who want A Second Maiden's Tragedy to be Cardenio, is the proof that the two plays were documented to be two DIFFERENT plays. How? Plays were registered in order to allow one person to lay claim to the rights of ownership of the play. This was done by paying a fee to register the name of the play with the Registrar's. Sometimes, to save paying two fees for two different plays, a person would give two titles as the same play. In this way someone could register, say, The Tempest OR Julius Caesar, and pay one fee for two plays. In this way they could claim both plays by paying only for one of them.

As it happens, The Second Maiden's Tragedy AND Cardenio were registered ON THE SAME DAY, BY THE SAME PERSON, AND AS TWO DIFFERENT PLAYS. If these were the same play as Hamilton proposes why would they pay the register fee TWICE, when the practice was to save money by registering two plays as one?

The fact is that A Second Maiden's Tragedy could not possibly be the lost play, Cardenio, and therefore the claim that Shakespeare wrote this play is weak at best.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cardenio, Shakespeare's lost and found play, May 3, 2010

By 

Andrea Twain "liberty bell" (Berlin, Germany) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Cardenio or the Second Maiden's Tragedy (Paperback)

This is both text and background material for Cardenio, a play usually attributed to Shakespeare, co-authored by John Fletcher towards the end of Shakespeare's career. The background material is rich, interesting and necessary for placing the play, and its evolution, in context. This is the play Arden is releasing as "Double Falsehood" in 2010 as a play, #37, finally accepted into the Shakespeare canon. The character Cardenio, comes from Cervantes' magnum opus, "Don Quixote", where he is an interesting character in an interesting situation, which Cervantes does not take full advantage of. Shakespeare and Fletcher take the character, expand the plot and fill it with drama. A wonderful read.