Appendix XV. “Double Falsehood”
In 1728 there appeared at London a play with the following title: “Double Falsehood, or The Distressed Lovers; written originally by W. Shakespeare, and now revised and adapted to the stage by Mr. Theobald, the author of Shakespeare Restor'd.”
It was dedicated to the Rt. Hon. George Dodington, Esq. In the Preface Theobald states that one of the copies in MS. is of above sixty years' standing. He goes on to say that there is a tradition that Shakspere wrote it—“in the time of his retirement from the stage.” The story is taken from a novel in Don Quixote, which appeared in 1611, five years before Shakspere's death. Theobald professes to allow that the colouring, diction, and characters come nearer to the style and manner of Fletcher.
Some writers[580] have supposed that Theobald in compiling [pg 205] this play used materials from a lost play by Massinger. The first thing we notice in it is that there are a good many prose scenes. This is unlike Massinger. In the second place, the metre is unlike Massinger's; it is simple and regular, and contains very few double endings or run-on lines. In Act II., 4, Leonora gives an important letter to her lover Julio, out of a window, to a “citizen” whom she does not know, by night. Is this improbable incident the sort of thing that Massinger would write?[581]
The whole play is an eighteenth-century effusion in the manner of Rowe. There is no trace of Fletcher or Massinger here.