We have always believed that Shakespeare left behind something like 38 theatrical pieces, comic, historic, and tragic. The exact number has always been in dispute, since it has proven confoundingly difficult to correctly attribute a given work to its author, and there have always been those who feel that the man pictured in Droeshout’s famous engraving was not the same man who wrote Hamlet, Julius Caesar, and Othello.

The scholarly debate surrounding the Bard of Avon was given fuel by the recent discovery of a so-called 39th play, which fits in none of the three canonical categories. Neither purely a comedy, a tragedy or a history, it might be more accurately described as a Sci-Fi Action Comedy.

DeathSoldier 1650 is set in Florence in what for Shakespeare would have been the near future — 1650. In a speech at the beginning of the play, the narrator explains that rival Florentine families have been at war for decades, and have transformed the once-thriving city into “quarry most crude and foule, whence nature hath fled and ruin o’erturned reason”. Set directions call for abandoned buildings and streets lined with rubble.

Meanwhile, in a secret laboratory outside the city, alchemists in the employment of one family have been experimenting with bodily humours in order to produce the perfect killing machine; an indestructible one-man army that will finally bring an end to the war.

Then something goes terribly wrong. Though taught to mindlessly destroy, their creation (code named DeathSoldier 1650) somehow—inexplicably—develops a conscience. He flees to the nearby village and disguises himself as a woman. There, he falls in love with a beautiful damsel who turns out to be the chief alchemist’s daughter.

Their strange relationship is further complicated when the girl’s fianc, a vain aristocrat named Bulgio, arrives in Florence, and immediately falls in love with DeathSoldier 1650, who is still disguised as a woman.

Upon hearing that the heart of his daughter’s rich suitor has been stolen by another, the chief alchemist hires a pair of bungling stooges to murder DeathSoldier 1650. Their plan involves an exploding cake, but it fails. To his horror, DeathSoldier 1650 instinctively kills his would-be assassins, then performs a tearful soliloquoy wherein he questions whether he can ever be anything but a killing machine.

Meanwhile, the chief alchemist, still jealous over his spurned daughter, engineers a second DeathSoldier, this one “inheriting neither clemency nor else that is meek”. This time, he believes, he cannot fail to kill the woman who has stolen Bulgio’s heart. However, unbeknownst to him, his fair daughter has overheard his diabolical machinations, and rushes to confess her father’s iniquity to DeathSoldier 1650.

In the process of her confession, the true identity of DeathSoldier 1650 is revealed, and the two immediately fall in love. Just then, the newer model of DeathSoldier — who turns out to be female—arrives and attempts to kill DeathSoldier 1650, who refuses to fight back. There is a long chase through a construction site.

Just as the killing blow is about to be struck, Bulgio arrives to propose marriage to DeathSoldier 1650, but when he sees the female DeathSoldier it is love at first sight. The feeling is mutual, so the female DeathSoldier, inspired by her new emotions, frees DeathSoldier 1650, and promises never to kill anyone again.

Then they all get married.

It is often said that modern storytelling is merely a reiteration of the classic themes explored by Shakespeare. This theory has always been hotly debated in the academic world, because it failed to account for such films as Kurt Russell’s Soldier, Van Damme’s Universal Soldier, or Schwarzenegger’s The Terminator, which didn’t fit within the framework of any plays in Shakespeare’s accepted folios.

For this reason, a lost example of The Bard’s work in the “Genetic Killing Machine Falls in Love” genre has long been theorized by scholars like myself. Until now, we’ve been treated rather rudely by some who point to the total lack of evidence to support our conjectures.

Well fuck you, Jerry. Who’s laughing now, huh? Is it you? No, it’s me.