In Search of Lost Shakespeare
It’s perhaps the world’s most exclusive
club. They let in 36 members back in 1623; since then only two more have been
admitted. Others wait beyond the velvet rope, including a knight named Ironside,
a saint named Tom, and a crazed Spanish wanderer named Cardenio no one has seen
in 400 years.
A wonderful assortment of strange characters occupy what is known as the Shakespeare Apocrypha. Some of these plays are widely championed as being at least in part authored by the Bard, like an early work entitled Sir Edmund Ironside and a later work, Sir Thomas More, based on the life of the English saint.
All
have champions. Only one, Cardenio, has
both a distinct identity, an itinerant, lonely character made mad by lost love who features in Miguel de Cervantes’ epic
novel Don Quixote; and direct
attribution to Shakespeare in the form of a 1653 register entry for the play.
