Line #6 MissingEpisode/Theatre


1	* Many Creator/GilbertAndSullivan fans have never heard of their first collaboration, ''Thespis''. The reason is that Sullivan's music is lost except for two songs: "Little Maid of Arcadee" (published as sheet music) and "Climbing Over Rocky Mountain" (reused in ''Theatre/ThePiratesOfPenzance''). Since Gilbert's libretto survived, there have been multiple efforts to "reconstruct" ''Thespis'' with "Sullivan-style" music. Creator/IsaacAsimov even wrote a time travel story in 1978 ("Fair Exchange?") which focused on a character travelling back to 1871 to rescue the score.
2	* Almost half of the plays of Creator/WilliamShakespeare, including ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'' and ''Theatre/TheTempest'', might have been lost forever if his friends had not decided to publish a memorial volume after his death. Still, some of Shakespeare's work has probably been lost forever:
3	** There are various references in contemporary documents to a play co-written by William Shakespeare titled ''Cardenio'', probably adapted from a section of ''Literature/DonQuixote'', which is generally accepted to have been completely lost. However, the only contemporary reference to the play being written by Shakespeare was by a bookseller called Humphrey Moseley, who is known to have falsely attributed other plays to him to make them more saleable, and a minority theory suggests that it was a retitling and false attribution of ''The Second Maiden's Tragedy'' by Thomas Middleton, which loosely adapts the same episode from the novel but gives it a much more violent and tragic ending.
4	** There are records of a play called ''Love's Labours Won'', which was thought to be an alternate title for ''Theatre/TheTamingOfTheShrew'' until a fragment turned up that listed them as separate plays. It's also been suggested that it's an alternate title for ''Theatre/MuchAdoAboutNothing'' -- a 2014 Royal Shakespeare Company production even [[http://www.rsc.org.uk/whats-on/loves-labours-won/usually-known-as.aspx performed it under that title]] -- but since ''Theatre/LovesLaboursLost'' has a pretty clear SequelHook, it's just as possible that it's a now-lost direct sequel to the earlier play. [[Series/DoctorWho And considering]] [[Recap/DoctorWhoS29E2TheShakespeareCode its writing was influenced by witches using the play as cover for a summoning ritual]], maybe it's for the best...
5	** This also applies somewhat to the play ''Theatre/PericlesPrinceOfTyre'', which only exists in a corrupt, pirated copy. [[note]]However, his supposed collaborator George Wilkins wrote a novelization entitled ''The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prince of Tyre'', which some scholars have attempted to use as a source for reconstructing some of the play's dialogue.[[/note]]
6	* Countless ancient Greek plays have been lost to the historical ether. Of all the ancient Greek playwrights, most are not even represented by a single surviving play, and even of the four best-preserved dramatists, we possess only a meagre portion of their complete bodies of works:
7	** Creator/{{Aeschylus}}, regarded as the father of dramatic tragedy, is known to have written seventy plays; today, we possess only six or seven (a landmark study by Mark Griffith in 1977 has left the authorship of ''Prometheus Bound'' in doubt). Among the lost plays are the second and third plays in the ''Prometheia'' trilogy, ''Prometheus Unbound'' and ''Prometheus the Fire-Bringer'', of which only fragments survive.
8	** Creator/{{Sophocles}}, the second great Greek tragedian, is credited with 120 plays, but only seven have survived in their entirety. Fragments of a previously lost play of his, ''Theatre/TheProgeny'', were discovered in 2005. The play is part of the [[Theatre/OedipusRex Oedipus cycle]], and is apparently about the Seven Against Thebes.
9	** The third great Greek tragedian, Creator/{{Euripides}}, fares only slightly better, with eighteen or nineteen (at least one play's authorship is debated) of over ninety plays surviving. Notably, he is the only Greek tragedian represented by a complete surviving "satyr play" (a burlesque tragicomedy performed in the middle or at the end of a group of tragic plays), ''The Cyclops''.
10	** Creator/{{Aristophanes}}, the greatest of the Greek comedians, has eleven surviving plays out of around forty. He is also the only surviving example of Athenian Old Comedy we have, forming an entire lost genre.
11	** Creator/{{Menander}}'s ''Dyskolos'' ("Grouch") was recovered by archaeologists a few decades since with only thirty-nine lines missing, but is the only specimen of the Athenian New Comedy with enough material to survive to make performance theoretically possible.
12	* Claudio Monteverdi completed at least eight operas and may have written as many as eighteen, but only three survive with a complete score (the earliest, ''Theatre/LOrfeo'', and the last two, ''Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria'' and ''L'incoronazione di Poppea''). Of the remaining operas, while their librettos are complete, we have only a single fragment of the music from two of them (one being the famous "Lament of Arianna" from the otherwise lost ''L'Arianna'', the other being a trio from ''Proserpina rapita''), while the rest are completely missing.[[note]] It is speculated that, since the lost operas date from the 1610s and 1620s, the scores were lost in the wars that engulfed Mantua in the 1630s.[[/note]] The librettos and musical fragments only survived because they were published separately.
13	* In a rather strange case, the musical ''Theatre/{{RENT}}'' by Johnathan Larson survives in text form and recorded performances. However, what's been heavily sought after is a recording with the full original cast. While the movie survives, it omits several songs and has two alternate cast members. On top of that, the live setting is considered to be far superior and the original performers were acclaimed for their skills. In 2006, a low quality camera recording was recovered of the opening night performance, but it's hard to tell what's going on and everything is distorted beyond all belief. It's believed that a full performance with the original cast exists somewhere, but for some reason nobody will release the full version.
14	* ''[[Franchise/MortalKombat Mortal Kombat: Live Tour]]'' was a touring stage show based off the famous video game franchise that played for only ten dates across six months. And while the show's the press kit and promotional video can be easily found online, the actual stage show was never officially released in any form and there's no evidence that it was ever taped by fans in attendance.
15	* The Creator/TakarazukaRevue only began filming performances circa the 1970s and it wasn't until the 1990s that performances were regularly filmed for broadcast, so almost all pre-1970s shows are lost forever. Even today some shows aren't filmed because of copyright issues (2013's ''Forever Gershwin'' and 2019's ''On the Twentieth Century'' are two of the most notorious cases).
16	* ''Theatre/{{Elisabeth}}'':
17	** Good luck finding a full video of the Finnish production. The only evidence it ever existed is a few clips, photos and audios from it.
18	** The 1997 Takarazuka shinjin kouen was never fully recorded and only a few clips survive from it. This is especially irritating for Zuka fans, because Death in this version was played by Nao Ayaki, [[RetroactiveRecognition who would later become Top Star of Moon Trope]] (and [[RoleReprise played Death again in 2005]]).

Context MissingEpisode / Theatre