The Cardenio project is a multi-year experiment in cultural mobility.  Toward the end of his career Shakespeare evidently read an English translation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and, in collaboration with John Fletcher, wrote a play called Cardenio, based, as its title suggests, on a character in one of the novel’s episodes. The play was performed, and the script was entered into the official register to be approved for printing. But to date no copy of the resulting publication has been found.

Together with the playwright Charles Mee and with the generous financial support of the Mellon Foundation, Stephen Greenblatt wrote a new play, in a modern setting, based on narrative elements from Cervantes and using various Shakespearean theatrical devices.  In the wake of the play’s  performance at the American Repertory Theatre, Greenblatt contacted theater companies in different parts of the world and invited them to write and perform their own versions of the story Shakespeare adapted.  The results, partly chronicled here, track what happens when one culture (and theatrical tradition) picks up and reimagines plots, characters, and imagery from a very different culture.