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Shakespeare’s Lost Plays ✍️

PLUS: Rainy Weekends, Ireland, and Good Globalisation? 🌍

October 14, 2025

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Here’s a taste of what we’re serving today:

  • Shakespeare’s Lost Plays: What Did the Bard Write That We’ll Never See? ✍️

  • PLUS: Rainy Weekends, Ireland, and Good Globalisation? 🌍

ENGLISH LITERATURE

Shakespeare’s Lost Plays ✍️

We all know Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet—but did you know that William Shakespeare may have written several plays that have vanished from history? These "lost plays" are mentioned in historical records, but no known copies exist today. For literature lovers and historians alike, they are one of the great mysteries of the English stage.

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💡 Things to consider

  • The Missing Titles: Some of Shakespeare’s lost plays have intriguing titles, like Love’s Labour’s Won and Cardenio. Love’s Labour’s Won is even referenced as a sequel to one of the Bard’s popular plays Love’s Labour’s Lost, but no script has survived. Cardenio is said to be based on a story from Cervantes’ Don Quixote and possibly co-written with Shakepseare’s contemporary John Fletcher, but again, the text is lost.

  • How Do We Know They Existed?: These plays are referenced in booksellers’ lists, diaries, and letters from Shakespeare’s time. The Treasurer of the Chamber to King James I gave Shakespeare's colleague Heminge (often written Heminges) 'twentie powndes' in May 1613 for "presentinge sixe severall playes". "Cardenno" was described as one of that was to be shown. Two months later, the treasurer's records once more contain the same title, but this time they have been invited to perform it for a visiting duke. Another bookseller's list appears in 1653, when they are publishing a number of plays, including John Fletcher and William Shakespeare's The History of Cardenio.

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    Shakespeare’s lost plays:

  • Why Were They Lost? : The Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic tradition was a little different from modern theatre in the way play-texts were disseminated - there wasn't a single master manuscript written by Shakespeare from which quarto and folio texts were simply transcribed, or at least not one that's survived. Fires, censorship, and even simple neglect could have led to their disappearance. Imagine what we could have learned about Shakespeare’s growth as a writer if these texts had survived. Some of the differences in the precise language of the text of any given play can be explained by the fact that print editions had to be assembled at the time they were ready for publication (perhaps from memory, possibly from rough drafts, or scripts that actors kept).

🔎 Find out more

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That’s it for this week! We’d like to thank this week’s writer: Poppy Seagrove.

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