The Axel Files: The History of Cardenio

Vero Nihil Verius

People find comfort in their histories. It connects them to a continuum that we are all a part of and thus gives us purpose and hope. Children who’ve been adopted invariably need to know who they are, where they came from, and how they are connected to the world. But what if it was all wrong? What if everything you thought you knew was a lie: an obfuscation designed to mislead? If this happened to you, wouldn’t you demand the truth? Wouldn’t you need to know who you really were?

And so, English artist Alice Bulbeck and her twin brother, Edward, approach Axel Webb to find a lost Shakespeare play entitled The History of Cardenio. The play, performed only once for James I, has been lost for 400 years. It wasn’t included in the 1623 First Folio published by Shakespeare’s friends after his death. It is the only known play credited to William Shakespeare that has never been published. The question is, why?

Controversy has surrounded the authorship of the Shakespeare plays ever since they were written four centuries ago. Many of the Bard’s contemporaries have been put forward as the actual author of the plays; one such man is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, formerly known as Viscount Bulbeck. So why are orphaned twins, born to a Shoreditch bag lady known as Mad Alice, named Edward and Alice Bulbeck? It is the question the twins ask private investigator Axel Webb to answer.

If Axel can find The History of Cardenio, he’ll discover the truth. But history is not the truth: History is a sloppy goulash of fact, fable, and self-interest. Those whose interests will be tarnished will do anything to stop the truth from coming into the open. One such man is Theo Payne-Foster, CEO of Payne-Foster Publishing, the leading publisher of everything and anything to do with the man we call William Shakespeare. If the truth of who wrote The History of Cardenio ever comes out, it will cost Payne-Foster a fortune. And so, he will do anything to stop that from happening. His main obstacle, the man he must stop, is Axel Webb.