Shakespeare's Lost Play

The Bard of Stratford wrote a play that was never performed at the Globe, nor was it included in the First Folio edition of Shakespeare's plays way back when.  It slipped through the theatrical cracks of the early seventeenth century.

The play is called Bartimello.  The plot goes like this.  Duke Sforza of Milan is mad as a hatter and must be replaced by one of his two sons, one of whom is illegitimate.  Both sons are in love with the beautiful Aura, although neither son knows of the other's affection for the beautiful young maid.  It's a situation that happens in a lot of Shakespeare's plays.  It is the job of Bartimello, a private detective, to find out who the legitimate son is so that the rightful heir may replace his crazy father as ruler of Milan.  Bartimello eventually learns who's legitimate and who's not.  The legitimate son, named Rudolfo, marries Aura in a ceremony performed by Friar Benedict, the only priest listed in the dramatis personae.  Bartimello is handsomely rewarded by Rudolfo and marries the duke's illegitimate daughter before exiting stage left.  Being mad, the duke had fathered a lot of children out of wedlock without knowing it.

The play has not yet been discovered except by this short story.  It is housed in the Third Eye School of Private Detection in Urbana, Illinois.  It's inevitable that one of the school's students will one day put two and two together and discover Bartimello.  He's going to be a very wealthy detective.

~William Hammett

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