william shakespeare considered to be one of the greatest playwrights ever born he wrote plays like romeo and juliet hamlet and a midsummer night's dream but there's another one of his works that may have been lost to history it's called cardinio you won't find it in a book or on stage but perhaps in an adaptation of it from NUMBER_TOKEN a play going by the name double falsehood which claims to have preserved the bard's original script but is this an elaborate hoax or a genuine shakespearean play to be or not to be that is the question act NUMBER_TOKEN the curtain closes we open this story with a death on the NUMBER_TOKENrd of april NUMBER_TOKEN following an illustrious career of playwriting and poetry william shakespeare dies aged NUMBER_TOKEN. now it's not certain how he passed but the local vicar wrote later that shakespeare and his friends quote had a merry meeting and it seems drank too hard for shakespeare died of a fever there contracted during his lifetime shakespeare did not publish any of his plays himself it seems like he expected his extraordinary works to die with him or simply fade away from history the only written record of shakespeare's plays during his lifetime were through little pamphlets called quartos these quarters were small flimsy pieces of paper folded twice over to make four leaves each quarto contained a single play and while some were quite accurate in other cases some had rather dubious contents these quote unquote bad quartos were often just written from vague memory they didn't preserve the play word for word and the verses were jumbled lines were missing and other parts of the play were simply paraphrased in other words there were cheap shakespeare knockoffs sold for about a sixpence that's about five pounds or six dollars in today's money in light of these quote stolen and superititious copies a group of shakespeare's friends and colleagues notably two actors from shakespeare's dramatic company john hemmings and henry condell collected his works into one official document being actors for shakespeare himself they were able to faithfully memorize much of the plays themselves but to fill in any gaps they used whatever they could find any of the good quartos prompt books lying about and in some cases shakespeare's private working drafts all of these original documents being paper are now likely lost to history but finally some seven years later in NUMBER_TOKEN john hemmings and henry condell published the first folio a definitive collection of shakespeare's works you can think of it as an early shakespeare canon it contained NUMBER_TOKEN plays NUMBER_TOKEN of which had never been officially published plays like NUMBER_TOKENth night macbeth julius caesar and the tempest had their first folio not been published these plays might never have survived needless to say the first folio is one of the most important books ever written in the english language it contains some of the finest poems and plays ever written nowadays if you were to pick up a copy of the complete works of shakespeare what you're reading is taken from the first folio however the first folio didn't preserve all of shakespeare's
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