.......In 1613, John Heminges, one of the owners of the Globe Theatre (along with David and Cuthbert Burbage, Augustine Phillips, Thomas Pope, and Will Kempe), accepted payment for a play referred to as Cardenno and also as Cardenna. The King's Men (the acting company of which Shakespeare was a member) performed the play under the title of Cardenno in 1612 at the court of King James I and later, under the title of Cardenna, for an ambassador of the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel I (1562-1630). The Norton Shakespeare says documents from Shakespeare's time "suggest that the King's Men owned a play [on the subject of Cardenio] at the time that Shakespeare was collaborating with John Fletcher. . . . On 20 May 1613 the Privy Council authorized payment of [20 pounds] to John Heminges, as leader of the King's Men, for the presentation at court of six plays, one listed as 'Cardenno.' " (Greenblatt, Stephen, General Editor. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, page 3109.)
.......The play was also performed at the Blackfriars Theatre in London, according to the BBC TV production In Search of Shakespeare.

Play Registered in 1653

.......In 1653, Humphrey Moseley officially recorded in the Stationers' Register a play entitled The History of Cardenio, identifying its authors as John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Mosely was a well known stationer who registered plays written by the team of John Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. A copy of an original document prepared by Moseley is posted at the Twilight Pictures Internet site devoted to Fletcher and Beaumont.

Play Included in Third Folio

.......In 1664, Cardenio was included in the second printing of the Third Folio of Shakespeare's plays, according to the Encylopaedia Britannica. ("First Folio." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Standard Edition on CD-ROM. 2001.)
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Shakespeare Identified as Source

.......In 1727, Lewis Theobald (1688-1744) wrote a tragicomedy entitled The Double Falsehood, or Distrest Lovers, which he said was based on an old Shakespeare script of a play about Cardenio, a character in Part I of Miguel Cervantes' novel, Don Quixote. (Greenblatt, Stephen, General Editor. The Norton Shakespeare. New York: W.W. Norton, 1997, page 3109.)
.......Part I of Don Quixote was first published in Spanish in 1605 and in English (Thomas Shelton translation) in 1612, the same year that the King's Players performed Cardenno. 
.......Theobald was a writer and dramatist who also edited a Shakespeare edition published in seven volumes in 1733-1734 for the Jacob Tonson publishing company, which published works of John Dryden, John Milton, and Edmund Spenser.

Manuscript Lost, Then Reportedly Found

.......The original handwritten manuscript of the play entitled The History of Cardenio (or Cardenno or Cardenna) disappeared after it was performed. Between 1807 and 1808, the British Museum acquired a handwritten script of a play entitled The Second Mayden's ["Maiden's"] Tragedy and subsequently filed it in the British Library as "MS Landowne 807." In the 1990's, Charles Hamilton, an American expert in paleography and handwriting analysis (and author of In Search of Shakespeare: A Reconnaissance Into the Poet's Life and Handwriting), examined the play in the British Library and concluded that the British Library script was the 1612 Shakespeare play about Cardenio, maintaining that the handwriting in the script matched the handwriting in Shakespeare's will and other documents he had written. The title of the play–the fourth (after Cardenno, Cardenna, and The History of Cardenio)–appears to support the view that it was the work of Fletcher and Shakespeare. Here's why: Before the King's Players could perform the drama at the court of King James I, the royal censor had to approve it as suitable. When it was submitted to him without a title, he thought it was a sequel to another play written by Fletcher and Francis Beaumont. Because the earlier play was called The Maid's Tragedy, the censor gave the new play the working title The Second Mayden's [Maiden's] Tragedy. 

Play Contains Shakespearean Motifs

.......The text of Cardenio, or The Second Maiden's Tragedy, contains many Shakespearean motifs, as the plot summary below points out.