Lewis Theobald - Double Falshood

Double Falshood

In 1727, Theobald produced a play Double Falshood; or The Distrest Lovers, which he claimed to have based on a lost play by Shakespeare. Pope attacked it as a fraud, but admitted in private that he believed Theobald to have worked from, at the least, a genuine period work. Modern scholarship is generally of the opinion that Theobald was honest in his claim, for Double Falshood appears to be based on the lost Cardenio, by Shakespeare and John Fletcher.