We’ve
posted about “literary” fan fiction before- where fans take a classic book and
continue or add to the story using their own ideas and imagination.
But
every once in a while a classic tale can serve as the launching pad for a work
that becomes a classic in its own right. Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea jumps off
the shoulders of Jane Eyre , J.M. Coetzee
re-imagines Robinson Cruso in his book Foe , while Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz
and Gildenstern Are Dead fleshes out
the lives (or imminent deaths) of two bit-characters from Shakespeare’s Hamlet .
But
these classics-begotten-by-classics generally reach back in time quite a ways. You
don’t often see a serious author riff off of the work of a contemporary (And no,
Fifty Shades and Twilight
don’t count.) But it turns out Shakespeare,
of all people, wasn’t above it.
The
first English translation of Cervantes’ Don
Quixote hit England’s shores in 1612.
In it, you find the side-story of a ruined and ragged youth named Cardenio. A
year later, in 1613, a play by the name of “The History of Cardenio,” attributed
to Shakespeare, but now lost, made its London debut.
Blatant
opportunism? Or flattering fan-fic? Sadly,
we’ll never know.