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This select list provides in tabular form the key dates relating to Cardenio and Double Falsehood, from the first performance by the King’s Men in 1613, to professional theatre productions in New York and Stratford-upon-Avon in 2011, and beyond.

This chapter, which concludes the introductory section of the work, narrows the focus to simple assertions. Aristotle demonstrates with brilliant neatness that all such assertions either affirm or deny, and that moreover they may be ordered into pairs, one representing a pair of simple elements as combined, the other as separated. His approach reflects his ’internal’ theory of negation: very different from the Stoic ’external’ view more familiar to later logicians. His definition of negation does not presuppose anything about the truth or falsehood of the two members of a contradictory pair.

This chapter shows how book 1 of Paradise Lost metaphorically depicts the role of the devil in raising the rebel angels out of their “bottomless perdition,” an act of poetic creation analogous to the divine creation of the universe described in the invocation—“how the heavens and earth/Rose out of chaos.” The chief devils described in the catalog that occupies the center of book 1 and organizes its poetic figures and symbolic geography—Carthage, Sodom, Egypt, Babel-Babylon, Rome—are precisely those who will come to inhabit the pagan shrines that human idolatry will build next to or even inside the Jerusalem temple, profaning God's house. This catalog—whose traditional epic function is to size up military force—instead suggests the force of spiritual falsehood, and it corresponds to the defeated devils' own reluctance to pursue another direct war against God; they would rather resort to satanic fraud.

Do dialetheic theories do better as regard revenge problems than theories that restrict excluded middle? This chapter argues that they do not, and shows in particular that each of the revenge problems that Priest has raised against theories without excluded middle arise against dialetheic theories as well. The charge that dialetheic theories can't express the property of being solely true is investigated. It is found that a full defense against the charge requires a transfinite sequence of weaker and weaker negation-like operators, reminiscent of the sequence of iterations of the determinacy operator in theories that restrict excluded middle.

This chapter argues that historians must not only consider what the texts of the speeches actually represent, but also the orator's preference for persuasiveness over truthfulness. It is shown that in the speeches, Cicero does not signal possible inventions by marks of diffidence. One example of falsehood in a forensic speech is Cicero's account in his defence of Milo with regard to the death of Clodius at Bovillae. The technique of inserting a relatively brief and unadorned lie into a mass of other narrative or argument, which may itself be a misrepresentation of the facts, is identified. Another technique is the falsehood by implication through tendentious description.

This chapter attempts to make a start in detailing the structure and nature of protolinguistic activity in its individual and social usage. This leads to a model for explaining a natural developmental flow (also allowing for, incorporating, and making understandable inventive ‘leaps’) in the semantic evolution of the race and the individual before — and into — language. After first acquiring a language (racially or individually), the use of protolanguage cannot be abandoned. The subtle interplay between language and protolanguage and their separate domains of semantic dominance and richness call for investigation.

The recognition that P and not-P share their content is one of the main insights of Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Anscombe uses this insight in her discussions of truth and falsehood, raising the question: what sort of priority does truth have over falsehood? Another notion she examines is that of ‘making true’. Her discussion makes it clear how the applicability of this notion is more restricted than many philosophers would like. The difference between sense and nonsense is another Wittgensteinian theme. Like Wittgenstein, Anscombe takes seriously the possibility, in philosophy, of enlightening or useful nonsense, and her anti-Carnapian discussion of names of names brings this out. She goes further than early Wittgenstein, however, in making room for mystery. Her interpretation and discussion of the later Wittgenstein's remarks on essence and grammar, and on bedrock conclude this chapter.

This chapter explores the history and ingredients of the tort of malicious falsehood. It would appear that the tort though developed from a group of related torts should now be viewed as unified in principle and application. The key ingredient is malice and the chapter explores the different meanings of this concept, though noting that the typical case will involve denigration or disparagement. This tort is of limited use and is largely overshadowed by statutory provisions relating to ‘threats’ and comparative advertising. The important issue of free speech has shaped this tort and confined its application is also debated. Finally, the relationship of this tort to the unlawful means tort and the torts of defamation and passing off is analysed.

This chapter explores the potential future developments of the misrepresentation economic torts: deceit, malicious falsehood, and passing off. Deceit and its satellite actions — the action for bribery and the actions for dishonest assistance — though useful play a limited role in the legal control of economic activity. However, there are possible areas of expansion revealed for the torts of malicious falsehood and passing off that could edge the common law liability closer to a more generalised unfair competition action. This is particularly the case with the tort of passing off: either it could become a more generalised tort of commercial misrepresentation or even transform from a misrepresentation tort into one that protects valuable intangibles.

This chapter introduces the economic torts, i.e., those torts that have as their name suggests the primary function of protecting claimants' economic interests. They include the general economic torts of inducing breach of contract, the unlawful means tort, intimidation, lawful means conspiracy, unlawful means conspiracy and the misrepresentation economic torts of deceit, malicious falsehood, and passing off. The tort of negligence is also discussed as in exceptional circumstances it may perform the function of an economic tort but it is noted that its rationale is different from the economic torts. Unlike negligence, which looks to dependency, the economic torts look to unlawful acts and offer the common law rules of the economic game. The policy issue for all these torts is whether the courts, in the absence of an action for unfair competition, should adopt an interventionist or abstentionist policy in relation to imposing liability.

This chapter analyses Lewis Theobald’s adaptations of two early modern plays that survive in their original form, with the intention of providing evidence of the kind of treatment he might be expected to have given the lost Fletcher/Shakespeare Cardenio in adapting it as Double Falsehood (1727). Close examination of Theobald’s The Fatal Secret, based on John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, and The Tragedy of King Richard II, based on Shakespeare’s play, reveals a coherent pattern of adaptation to suit neoclassical norms of the early eighteenth-century theatre. He consistently cuts and rewrites to achieve neoclassical unities, decorum, and plausibility. He frequently retains original speeches but gives them to other characters for different purposes. Importantly, he nearly always writes his own scene- and act-endings. These various techniques provide suggestive evidence about how Double Falsehood may differ from its early modern original.

This chapter examines the cross-dressing role for the female character Violante in Double Falsehood, based on episodes in Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote, and asks whether this heroine’s theatrical transvestism may tie the early eighteenth-century version to its Jacobean source, the lost Shakespeare and Fletcher play Cardenio. The chapter examines the efficacy of Violante’s male disguise in both Shakespeare and Fletcher’s work and Theobald’s — efficacy with regards to successful deception, but also as a protective tool. Enveloping these questions is the broader question of gender and its relation to power. The question of Violante’s rape (or seduction) and subsequent attempted rape is central: in particular, the fascinating sequence in which Violante as a transvestite confronts her rapist and accuses him of ‘bobbing’ her, not as a woman — but as a boy.

This chapter examines the changes effected in the Spanish translation of Double Falsehood (1987, repr. 2007) by its translator Charles David Ley. On the one hand, Ley replaced the Theobald title with that of Historia de Cardenio (by Shakespeare and Fletcher) and went back to Cervantes for the original names of the characters. On the other, he questioned some aspects of Theobald’s text and altered some passages in his rendering, mainly in the form of substitution and suppression of Theobald’s supposed additions to the lost original. All these textual changes — which are compared with those made by Gary Taylor in his reconstruction of The History of Cardenio — suggest how Ley’s personal interest in, and empathy with, the lost play led him to attempt to recover it, however minimally.

This chapter is an account by Bernard Richards of the writing of his acting version of Cardenio, which was put on at Queens’ College, Cambridge, various theatres in Devon, and the Edinburgh Festival in 2009. It argues that Lewis Theobald’s Double Falsehood is inadequate as a dramatic text, since it seems to be missing some crucial scenes. Richards provides his rationale for six new scenes he wrote to fill out the action. These scenes were partly based on the relevant chapters in Cervantes’s Don Quixote, although Richards, like Shakespeare and other Jacobean dramatists, did not feel compelled strictly to adhere to the source. Richards explains why he dropped a song from the Theobald version and substituted one by Robert Johnson that was probably used in the original 1613 production of Cardenio. The chapter concludes that the play was probably not among Shakespeare’s best, but must have been an adequate evening’s entertainment.

This review addresses the bold adaptation of Theobald’s Double Falsehood under the title Cardenio by Bernard Richards that was staged by students of Queens’ College, Cambridge, in March 2009. The contention of Richards that Double Falsehood is rendered narratively incoherent by its omission of several actions led him to write supplementary scenes to explicate the early relations of Julio and Henriquez and to bring into close focus the rape of Violante and the abduction of Leonora from the nunnery in a coffin. The added episodes greatly extend the role of Henriquez, though perhaps more in the sado-religiose spirit of the Gothic novel than of early eighteenth-century theatre. An accident-prone winter date for the performances robbed the cast of its Duke, and led to the transformation of Camillo into Camilla, but the actors rose to the occasion and fully vindicated their hazardous enterprise.

In January 2011, MokitaGrit produced the first professional production of Double Falsehood since the eighteenth century. This review pays particular attention to the implications of producing Double Falsehood as a piece in its own right rather than as the basis for reconstruction of Cardenio. A combination of relative textual fidelity and creative non-verbal decisions allows the play to be entertainingly staged, drawing out class divisions that underpin the dynamic between the lovers and amongst their parents. In making a case for the effectiveness of Theobald’s play on the modern stage, the production usefully, if unintentionally, encouraged audiences to move away from questions of authenticity and authorship to consideration of the extant play’s theatrical worth.

This chapter considers the theatrical challenges of reimagining Double Falsehood/Cardenio for production at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where Gregory Doran, the author, is the Chief Associate Director. Having directed a number of Fletcher plays for the company, including The Tamer Tamed, The Island Princess, and the Shakespeare collaboration All is True (Henry VIII), Doran became fascinated by the mysterious Cardenio, developing his adaptation of Theobald’s Double Falsehood with help from theatre colleagues and academic communities in Spain, to reassert some of the tone of the Cervantes’s original; and testing the text with Spanish-American actors from New York’s LAByrinth Theatre Company at an RSC residency in Michigan University, and in two workshops in Stratford. His purpose is not to pastiche an ‘authentic’ version of what the play might have been in 1613, but to re-explore the story in theatre terms for the twenty-first century. The production reopened the Swan Theatre in April 2011.