While you were sleeping through English Lit, other people were listening. Those same people have now turned up a new play by the Immortal Bard of Avon, William Shakespeare. (What have you done lately?)

Back in 1727, LewisTheobald, an editor of Shakespeare's works, claimed to have found a "lost" play from the Bard inspired by "Don Quixote" called "Cardenio." In the preface, Theobald basically said he had stolen the work from Shakespeare, tweaked it a little, and was now presenting it with the title "Double Falsehood."

No one believed him.

Until Dr. Brean Hammond, professor at England's University of Nottingham, came across a poem referencing the incident while researching a book about Alexander Pope.

He says, "I got out the play ... and was convinced that the material in it predated Theobald. He himself says so in the preface, and I came to the conclusion that the story he tells there is substantially true."

Keep reading to find out more about Shakespeare fakes and facts.

Shakespeare's works were collaborative
As Hammond delved further into the puzzle, he became convinced the work was indeed Shakespearean in origin, co-written with another playwright of the day, John Fletcher. Hammond set the project aside for a few years before picking it back up in the early 2000s and later converting editors at The Arden Shakespeare, who published it in March.

But some experts aren't convinced.

"There was certainly a play called 'Cardenio' by Shakespeare and Fletcher," Dr. Tiffany Stern, professor of early modern drama at Oxford University, told Asylum. "The question is: Did Theobald have of a copy of that text? He wrote plays, poems and prologues in imitation of Shakespeare's style a lot ... Were Theobald to 'forge' a play, it would probably sound like Shakespeare and have a story taken from Don Quixote."

Stern says "Double Falsehood" sounds "a bit Fletcherian" though the connection between the two authors wasn't discovered until years after Theobald's death. Still, "Theobald edited the plays of Shakespeare and Fletcher, so if he did forge his play, it might well sound like Fletcher as well as Shakespeare."

Hammond and his editors stand by the claim that the recently republished work is "Cardenio.""It is important to understand that Shakespeare worked collaboratively and that we don't yet know the full extent of this," he said.

"Lost" portrait reveals the real Shakespeare
A tendency to co-write, a lack of authenticated writing samples and the fact that Shakespeare's work was revised by armies of editors over the years all contribute to the mystery surrounding the man.

In fact, we've just learned what Shakespeare actually looked like; it's the portrait at the start of this article, not the balding hippie you see to the left, as researchers recently concluded.

Some people even believe William Shakespeare was merely an actor in the King's Men who was put forth as an author by the real writer(s), who did not want to be connected with such low-life activities as the theater.

"But that is ridiculous," Stern says.

In academic circles, the "Cardenio"/"Double Falsehood" conundrum is more than a tempest in a teapot.

As the Bard himself said in "Measure for Measure," "Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning."

Hard to argue with that.