The Axel Files: The History of Cardenio

Vero Nihil Verius - Nothing Is Truer Than The Truth

People find comfort in the histories that connect them to our combined continuum. It provides purpose to our fleeting existence. Adopted children invariably need to know who they are, where they came from, and how they are connected to their personal stories. 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 four hundred years. It is the only known play accredited 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 contemporary dramatists have been cited as the true author of the plays; one such man is Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford, formerly known as Viscount Bulbeck. Why are orphaned twins, born to a Shoreditch bag lady known as Mad Alice, named Edward and Alice Bulbeck. It is the same question the Bulbeck twins ask investigator Axel Webb to answer. If Axel can find Cardenio, he’ll discover the answer.

But history is not truth: history is a sloppy goulash of fact, fable, and self-interest. And those whose interest is tarnished by finding the truth will do anything to stop it from coming into the open. If Oxford can be proven to be the author of Cardenio: it would cost Theo Payne-Foster, CEO of Payne-Foster Publishing, a fortune. Payne-Foster will do anything to stop that from happening. His main obstacle, the man he must stop, is Axel Webb.