The History of Cardenio

The History of Cardenio, often referred to as simply Cardenio, is a lost play, known to have been performed by the King's Men, a London theatre company, in 1613.^[1] The play is attributed to William Shakespeare and John Fletcher in a Stationers' Register entry of 1653. The content of the play is not known, but it was likely to have been based on an episode in Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote involving the character Cardenio, a young man who has been driven mad and lives in the Sierra Morena. Thomas Shelton's translation of the First Part of Don Quixote was published in 1612 and would thus have been available to the presumed authors of the play.

Two existing plays have been put forward as being related to the lost play. A song, "Woods, Rocks and Mountains", set to music by Robert Johnson, has also been linked to it.^[2]