In This Good Time: Cardenio and the Temporal Character of Shakespearean Drama

My purpose in this essay is to examine some aspects of the temporal character of The History of Cardenio – as Gary Taylor’s reconstruction of the play currently exists, using the performance script employed for the 2009 production at Victoria University of Wellington –and compare the findings there with prominent temporal characteristics of Shakespearean drama. In so doing, my hope is to draw out the similarities and differences between the two, thus offering another tool for the ongoing charting of The History of Cardenio, which is in effect a process of triangulation: a literary-historical-performative positioning of the current text in the landscape of Shakespeare/Fletcher, Theobald, and the present day. I should note that the focus here is Shakespearean; Fletcher and Theobald (and Cervantes, for that matter) are by and large absent from my considerations. This is for the sake of focus, not because such comparisons would not yield equally interesting results; indeed, as I suggest in my conclusion, I hope that one thing this chapter demonstrates is the potential for further temporal readings that might do similar work in terms of the authors here omitted