Sorry, that plot’s been done

In January, I reviewed Jennifer Lee Carrell’s Interred with Their Bones, a novel about a Harvard grad who seeks to discover a lost volume of Shakespearean work.  And today, USA Today posted a story about … a Nottingham professor who has decided that the lost volume of Shakespearean work in question actually exists … or did at one time.

Here’s the gist – Double Falsehood was a play written in the 1700s by Lewis Theobald, who said he based his work substantially on a play by the Bard called Cardenio.  But Theobald seemed to have the only copy of Cardenio around, which made his story seem fishy, and many hailed him as a fraud.

So why didn’t Theobald just publish the manuscript and hush everyone up?  Excellent question – to which we may never know the answer.  But scholars are apparently in the process of clearing his name by claiming that Cardenio did exist. 

Jennifer Lee Carrell – if you are listening – I would publish this article on your website, assuring everyone that you knew before they did.  I would follow that statement with a hearty, “Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah.”

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