Definitely enjoyed it more than when I saw it performed but still not my favorite.

*Going to add an extra star after thinking it over. ( )

If I were rating the American Players Theatre performance of this play that I saw a couple of weeks ago, it would be a million stars, but I can’t say reading it gave me too much of a thrill. It was fine, it was weird, and in this case, it was more enjoyable to read it after I’d seen it (rather than before, which I usually do).
I like all the extras you get with these Folger’s editions—the introductory info about Shakespeare’s life, theatre during that period, the First Folio, and essays about the play—so it was a nice supplement to seeing it performed.
( )

This play is not greatly to my taste. But it does work on stage, and is a surviving work of the great writer. Imogen, the King's daughter is falsely accused of adultery, by the machinations of Iachimo, who creates an appearance of the deed. Imogen flees her father's court, but does recover her position by an unlikely series of events. the play did not give birth to the usual number of later clichés in language. ( )

A Comedy in the sense that most of the characters come out alive, but not much humor to it. A love tragedy which ends Happily Ever After.

I enjoyed the reading of this, and watching the BBC production of it. I would like to have a talk with Imogen about her everlasting love for a man who put out a hit on her because of circumstantial evidence, no matter how damning, but other than that it was one of the more satisfying plays I've read recently. I love the part of Pisanio, the servant. In my eyes, he is the man who deserves all praise. If I were ever to direct this play, he would be the focus. A level-headed man amongst all the flighty nobility. ( )

This is definitely my favorite Shakespeare plays. It serves as a mashup of all of them, in terms of plot content, and I think that it has some of Shakespeare's most vivid characterizations. It also seems to have fewer vulgar jokes, so that makes it much more enjoyable. Altogether, a tough read, but an excellent one. ( )

"What shalt thou expect, To be depender on a thing that leans?" (pg. 29)

There's a strange, placid satisfaction in enjoying something that most people have dismissed, a sort of positive, constructive counterpart to schadenfreude; an assurance that, having appreciated something, you appreciated it according to your own lights and not because you were told it was great. Like Iachimo in the play's famous bedchamber scene, I approached Cymbeline with scepticism and with pen in hand, ready to note down any errors, only to leave unaccountably charmed.

I really don't understand the dismissal of this play. I thought it was rather great. Shakespeare's reputation has been forged on his perfection of various forms of established drama: his tragedies, most notably, but also his comedies and his histories. (I should also mention his satires, The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew, though many people tend to misunderstand them.) He took the time-tested conventions and laced them with his own incomparable genius, giving depth to heroes, shade to villains, and ringing eloquence to characters who, in other hands, would be relegated to plot devices.

Cymbeline, on the other hand, belongs to a small stable that Shakespeare sought to construct from scratch, late in his career. Neither comedies nor tragedies nor histories, this group of plays (including the likes of The Tempest and The Winter's Tale) are more freewheeling, more experimental. And like most experiments, the results are of mixed success (with The Tempest widely considered the most successful), and most of the commentary on them tends to be apologetic. Sometimes the apologies are generous (the Introduction to my Arden edition of the play describes it as "a comprehensive piece of impressionism, that… finally expresses something which Shakespeare never quite achieves elsewhere" (pg. lxxviii)), but they're apologies nonetheless. Cymbeline isn't generally seen as being able to stand on its own, unlike, say, the inarguable brilliance of Macbeth or Hamlet.

However, while Cymbeline is one that the academics and the iamb-counters will break their lances on, those who recognise that Shakespeare was an entertainer (and an erudite one, at that) will wonder what all the confusion is about. As one of those strangest of creatures, someone who reads Shakespeare for fun, in his spare time, I found Cymbeline quite straightforward and thrilling.

Despite three plotlines, it's easy to follow. In one, the exiled Posthumus lays a wager with Iachimo that his wife Imogen is virtuous and incorruptible; Iachimo's attempts to undermine this are the cause of much of the destruction in the play. In the second plotline, tensions between the British kingdom and Rome are inflamed by manoeuvrings in the court of Cymbeline, king of the Britons. In the third (and weakest), Cymbeline's kidnapped sons have come of age in the wilderness, and the play primes itself for their return. We get the usual Shakespearean doses of scheming, cross-dressing and soliloquising, and if Cymbeline is never a match for Shakespeare's more well-known works, it certainly shines bright for such a lesser light.

The play has a lot of energy right from the start, and carries it through right to the end (the final scene has the daunting technical task of wrapping up three plotlines simultaneously, and unlike, say, The Winter's Tale, it pulls it off). Cymbeline himself is a bit-part player, with seemingly little understanding of what is going on around him (perhaps one of the reasons Shakespeare didn't steer this play into outright comedy was to avoid the dangerous business of mocking a king). Guiderius and Arviragus might be the king's sons, but Imogen, his daughter, is the sun around which the play orbits. She enters the play unpromisingly, like a grain of sand enters an oyster, and emerges, layered by the various happenings of the plot, as a bona fide pearl.

Unlike some of his other great heroines, I don't think Shakespeare intended for Imogen to be this good a character. In this, an experimental play, she is accidental; and the reason I believe this is so is because she has no worthy counterpart. Cleopatra had her Antony, Juliet her Romeo, Lady Macbeth her Macbeth – and, as far as father/daughters go, Cordelia had her Lear. Imogen, however, stands among inferiors. Posthumus, her husband, is a bit of a drip, and Iachimo is a venal trickster (though the latter is irresistibly moved by her, he is too dulled in his morality to process it). Her father Cymbeline has no hold over her, nor indeed any sense that she is already outside his grasp, and it is only Pisanio who comes closest to deserving to stand alongside her.

It is nevertheless these interactions which result in Cymbeline emerging as a fine piece of drama, and one much better than its critical dismissal suggests. The play lacks the iconic lines that can draw the punters in to, say, Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, but it makes up for this lack with some truly fine moments of drama. Scenes like the one between Imogen and Pisanio at Milford-Haven (a tense encounter which wouldn't be out of place in The Sopranos – "What shall I need to draw my sword? the paper Hath cut her throat already" (pg. 90)) are, if not among Shakespeare's best, are only not so because his best is so high, and are comfortably among the second rank. Others are truly special: the famous encounter in Imogen's bedchamber might be one of the most erotic scenes in literature.

This latter scene is, quite brilliantly, for the most part a single soliloquy, and this fact reminds me that Cymbeline, while not iconic, has its fair share of lines too. Imogen's fatalistic replies to Pisanio in the afore-mentioned Milford-Haven scene are deliciously curt, and her romantic lament after her husband departs for Italy carries real poetry ("I would have broke mine eye-strings, crack'd them, but To look upon him, till the diminution Of space had pointed him sharp as my needle: Nay, followed him, till he had melted from The smallness of a gnat, to air: and then Have turn'd mine eye, and wept" (pg. 16)). Even Posthumus gets his moment, with a bracing soliloquy on man's frustrations with womankind (pp71-73). The play might not be peopled with characters to stand with Imogen, but it is peopled with moments, and these are enough for the play to resist the leanings of even the most misguided critic. ( )

My favorite Shakespeare play so far! ( )

For some reason I didn't really like this one as much as I thought I would-- maybe my expectations were too high. I didn't think it was as strong as other jealousy plays (Othello, Winter's Tale), or as fun as other fairytale plays (Pericles, Two Noble Kinsmen). I'd really like to see a production-- then I think I'd be able to better appreciate the play and what can be done with it. It seems like there's a ton of scope for interesting performance.

Things I did like while reading: Imogen/Innogen, the exiles in the Welsh wilderness, the funeral song, Second Lord, and when Posthumus says "You have put me into rhyme". On the other hand, the play was almost intolerably plotty-- this doesn't have to be a bar to an enjoyable, funny, or moving play, but for whatever reason I felt like Cymbeline was without a good enough thematic hook, sense of humor, or character with a compelling plight to really grab me. I also wish we had gotten a bit more sense of the medieval Roman Britain setting. Oh well. Still some good stuff in there. ( )

Not a favourite, but mainly because the convoluted plot turns on far too many stacked up coincidences to ultimately be believable.

However, the biggest failing comes not from the play, but from Arkangel, in this one. In each play, they plug in some transition music to move you from scene to scene, which is all well and good, however, even with each transitional piece taking up less than a minute of airtime...

The music. Is. Terrible.

It's not fun to listen to, it's intrusive, and I, over the course of so many plays, now actually cringe each time a scene transitions.

And yet, even that pales to the odd time they actually put Shakespeare's lyrics to music. Again, simply awful.

And that's still not the worst part. In this particular play, when Posthumus (which is an absolutely quality handle, by the way. Good going, William!) sleeps and dreams of his family and, ultimately, Jupiter, the entire sequence is put to some of the most annoying music I've ever heard. It was so awful that I literally had to skip ahead to avoid it, and go to my hard copy of the play to read what I missed.

Honestly, whoever was the musical director for Arkangel should be soundly beaten, forced to listen to his or her own music continuously for a month, then have someone box their ears. ( )

Well that was fairly crazy! Convoluted plotting, humourous scenes reminiscent of the major comedies, preposterous coincidences reminiscent of Pericles, potions a la Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing, girls dressed as boys like...almost every other Shakespeare play...reversals of fortune, repentant confessions, name a non-Tragic Shakespeare trope it's probably in here and it's all pretty daft. Nevertheless the last two Acts are fun if you can tolerate the silliness and just see how Shakespeare manages to resolve all the disparate and knottily tangled plot threads.

I have the feeling Shakespeare was in a hurry to get some of the late romances down on paper and up on stage and less concerned with deep characterisation or even witticism or puns than in most of the earlier work. He was probably a very busy man, by then, not just a playwright and bit-part player but a shareholder in a Royally sponsored stage company, with all that entailed.
( )

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Title: Cymbeline
Author: William Shakespeare
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Play
Pages: 272
Words: 79K

Synopsis:

From Wikipedia

Cymbeline, the Roman Empire's vassal king of Britain, once had two sons, Guiderius and Arvirargus, but they were stolen twenty years earlier as infants by an exiled traitor named Belarius. Cymbeline discovers that his only child left, his daughter Imogen (or Innogen), has secretly married her lover Posthumus Leonatus, a member of Cymbeline's court. The lovers have exchanged jewellery as tokens: Imogen with a bracelet, and Posthumus with a ring. Cymbeline dismisses the marriage and banishes Posthumus since Imogen — as Cymbeline's only child — must produce a fully royal-blooded heir to succeed to the British throne. In the meantime, Cymbeline's Queen is conspiring to have Cloten (her cloddish and arrogant son by an earlier marriage) married to Imogen to secure her bloodline. The Queen is also plotting to murder both Imogen and Cymbeline, procuring what she believes to be deadly poison from the court doctor. The doctor, Cornelius, is suspicious and switches the poison with a harmless sleeping potion. The Queen passes the "poison" along to Pisanio, Posthumus and Imogen's loving servant — the latter is led to believe it is a medicinal drug. No longer able to be with her banished Posthumus, Imogen secludes herself in her chambers, away from Cloten's aggressive advances.

Posthumus must now live in Italy, where he meets Iachimo (or Giacomo), who challenges the prideful Posthumus to a bet that he, Iachimo, can seduce Imogen, whom Posthumus has praised for her chastity, and then bring Posthumus proof of Imogen's adultery. If Iachimo wins, he will get Posthumus's token ring. If Posthumus wins, not only must Iachimo pay him but also fight Posthumus in a duel with swords. Iachimo heads to Britain where he aggressively attempts to seduce the faithful Imogen, who sends him packing. Iachimo then hides in a chest in Imogen's bedchamber and, when the princess falls asleep, emerges to steal from her Posthumus's bracelet. He also takes note of the room, as well as the mole on Imogen's partly naked body, to be able to present false evidence to Posthumus that he has seduced his bride. Returning to Italy, Iachimo convinces Posthumus that he has successfully seduced Imogen. In his wrath, Posthumus sends two letters to Britain: one to Imogen, telling her to meet him at Milford Haven, on the Welsh coast; the other to the servant Pisanio, ordering him to murder Imogen at the Haven. However, Pisanio refuses to kill Imogen and reveals to her Posthumus's plot. He has Imogen disguise herself as a boy and continue to Milford Haven to seek employment. He also gives her the Queen's "poison", believing it will alleviate her psychological distress. In the guise of a boy, Imogen adopts the name "Fidele", meaning "faithful".

Back at Cymbeline's court, Cymbeline refuses to pay his British tribute to the Roman ambassador Caius Lucius, and Lucius warns Cymbeline of the Roman Emperor's forthcoming wrath, which will amount to an invasion of Britain by Roman troops. Meanwhile, Cloten learns of the "meeting" between Imogen and Posthumus at Milford Haven. Dressing himself enviously in Posthumus's clothes, he decides to go to Wales to kill Posthumus, and then rape, abduct, and marry Imogen. Imogen has now been travelling as "Fidele" through the Welsh mountains, her health in decline as she comes to a cave: the home of Belarius, along with his "sons" Polydore and Cadwal, whom he raised into great hunters. These two young men are in fact the British princes Guiderius and Arviragus, who themselves do not realise their own origin. The men discover "Fidele", and, instantly captivated by a strange affinity for "him", become fast friends. Outside the cave, Guiderius is met by Cloten, who throws insults, leading to a sword fight during which Guiderius beheads Cloten. Meanwhile, Imogen's fragile state worsens and she takes the "poison" as a hopeful medicine; when the men re-enter, they find her "dead." They mourn and, after placing Cloten's body beside hers, briefly depart to prepare for the double burial. Imogen awakes to find the headless body, and believes it to be Posthumus due to the fact the body is wearing Posthumus' clothes. Lucius' Roman soldiers have just arrived in Britain and, as the army moves through Wales, Lucius discovers the devastated "Fidele", who pretends to be a loyal servant grieving for his killed master; Lucius, moved by this faithfulness, enlists "Fidele" as a pageboy.

The treacherous Queen is now wasting away due to the disappearance of her son Cloten. Meanwhile, despairing of his life, a guilt-ridden Posthumus enlists in the Roman forces as they begin their invasion of Britain. Belarius, Guiderius, Arviragus, and Posthumus all help rescue Cymbeline from the Roman onslaught; the king does not yet recognise these four, yet takes notice of them as they go on to fight bravely and even capture the Roman commanders, Lucius and Iachimo, thus winning the day. Posthumus, allowing himself to be captured, as well as "Fidele", are imprisoned alongside the true Romans, all of whom await execution. In jail, Posthumus sleeps, while the ghosts of his dead family appear to complain to Jupiter of his grim fate. Jupiter himself then appears in thunder and glory to assure the others that destiny will grant happiness to Posthumus and Britain.

Cornelius arrives in the court to announce that the Queen has died suddenly, and that on her deathbed she unrepentantly confessed to villainous schemes against her husband and his throne. Both troubled and relieved at this news, Cymbeline prepares to execute his new prisoners, but pauses when he sees "Fidele", whom he finds both beautiful and somehow familiar. "Fidele" has noticed Posthumus' ring on Iachimo's finger and abruptly demands to know from where the jewel came. A remorseful Iachimo tells of his bet, and how he could not seduce Imogen, yet tricked Posthumus into thinking he had. Posthumus then comes forward to confirm Iachimo's story, revealing his identity and acknowledging his wrongfulness in desiring Imogen killed. Ecstatic, Imogen throws herself at Posthumus, who still takes her for a boy and knocks her down. Pisanio then rushes forward to explain that "Fidele" is Imogen in disguise; Imogen still suspects that Pisanio conspired with the Queen to give her the poison. Pisanio sincerely claims innocence, and Cornelius reveals how the poison was a non-fatal potion all along. Insisting that his betrayal years ago was a set-up, Belarius makes his own happy confession, revealing Guiderius and Arviragus as Cymbeline's own two long-lost sons. With her brothers restored to their place in the line of inheritance, Imogen is now free to marry Posthumus. An elated Cymbeline pardons Belarius and the Roman prisoners, including Lucius and Iachimo. Lucius calls forth his soothsayer to decipher a prophecy of recent events, which ensures happiness for all. Blaming his manipulative Queen for his refusal to pay earlier, Cymbeline now agrees to pay the tribute to the Roman Emperor as a gesture of peace between Britain and Rome, and he invites everyone to a great feast

My Thoughts:

This was much longer than the previous play or two and by the end I was getting antsy and ready for it to be over. And honestly, there are times I wonder about just reading the wiki page and calling that a day.

This Shakespeare Experiment isn't going superbly. While not going off the rails on a crazy train, I don't look forward to these at all. My zeal is definitely flagging and I feel like I'm doing a lot of slogging.

Next!

★★★☆☆ ( )

"Cymbeline" I considered a difficult play to stage until a surprisingly coherent version at the Huntington Theater, in 1991 when my grad school classmate Peter Altman ran the show, the theater. But reading it under the Trumpster makes all Iachimo’s lies problematic; our context changes the register of the play, disenchants it.

So many Shakespeare villains articulate truths, like Iago, and here, the clod Cloten, whose assault on the married Imogen gave me the title to my book on Shakespeare and popular culture, which I called "Meaner Parties."* Cloten says of her marriage to Leonatus, “It is no contract, none;/ And though it be allowed in meaner parties…to knit their souls,/ On whom there is no more dependency/ But brats and beggary, in self-figur’d knot,/ Yet you are curbed…by the consequence of a crown…”(II.iii.116ff) He refers to canon law’s accepting, in York Dean Swinburne’s Of Spousals, handshake marriages—as long as there were witnesses to the vows spoken along with the ring or token. By the way, three centuries before DeBeers, engagement and marriage rings weren't distinct; both could be military or wax-sealrings.
A couple scenes prior to Cloten here, Iachimo comes to England with a letter of endorsement, part of a bet, from Posthumus Leonatus (I.vi). Posthumus had been exiled to Italy by Cymbelene for displacing the new queen’s execrable son Cloten in Imogen’s affection—in fact, marrying her.

As in Merchant of Venice, where Shylock compares his daughter and his ducats, his dearest possessions, Posthumous compares Imogen’s gift ring and herself; to Iachimo’s taunt, “I have not seen the most precious diamond that there is, nor you the lady,” Posthumus rejoins, “I praised her as I rated her: so do I my stone.” Iachimo even refers to Imogen as “she your jewel” to accompany the diamond, “this your jewel”(I.iv.153).
Having set up so close a comparison—indeed, an identity— between the token jewel and the lover jewel, no wonder Posthumus falls apart when Iachimo brings back the bracelet he’d stolen from Imogen. Posthumus’s friend Philario notes he is “Quite beyond the government of patience!”(II.iv.150)—rather like a certain new Supreme Court judge.
Later confessing to King Cymbeline’s inquiry, “How came it yours?” about the diamond on his finger, Iachimo blurts out that he defamed Imogen with token evidence,
“that he could not / But think her bond of chastity quite crack’d,/ I having taken this forfeit”(V.v.206). Posthumus need not have so concluded had he not merged token and person so strongly in his own mind.
But Renaissance marriage-court records fill with rings and bracelets betokening contract, whereas in fact it was the words accompanying the token, the vow, that counted in law. What we call domestic court were then in church, canon courts like Deacon Swinburne’s in York Minster (the room still exists, with three judge chairs on a raised dias, now used as a vestry).
Shakespeare’s plays feature tokens and vows. Cymbeline could have learned how to run a ring court from the King of France in All’s Well. And of course Twelfth Night boasts the most rings of the Bard’s plays. (See my “Early Modern Rings and Vows in TN,” in Twelfth Night: New Critical Essays (NY: Routledge, 2011), ed. James Schiffer. Note: I quote from my old Harrison edition, which uses Iachimo, not Jachimo.

* "meaner" in Elizabethan usage, lower status "parties" (in the legal sense)...average Joes and Jo's ( )

Comparative prompt (that could include Cymbeline) for 117S:

Vested Interests

How is cross-dressing used in two plays? What are the effects of changing clothes? Consider genre—what tragic or comedic elements (such as sacrifice and marriage) result from cross-dressing? How are gender bending and crossing class/national boundaries different and/or similar? How do historical elements, such as boys playing female roles on the renaissance stage, impact how the reader views cross-dressing? Please craft a focused argument, supported with close readings of the texts, in response to one or more of these (or other) questions.

I sensed that Shakespeare trying to reuse his favorite dramatic devices, including: jealous lovers, wronged women, plucky heroines, male impersonation, scheming villains, idyllic landscapes, wise clowns. I also couldn't help noticing that, although the Bard called the play a tragedy, he was using a romantic comedy / adventure plot. He also gave the "tragedy" a happy ending, albeit a very complicated one. He had to unwind a large number of plot entanglements in one act. I found that complicated to read and wondered how it could be staged without turning into a train wreck. Despite that, I quite enjoyed reading the play, a rousing adventure with great characters. I thought was a vast improvement over the collaborations and a welcome lightening of tone. ( )

Willie seems to have been fixated on men who don't trust their wives. Maybe Anne was fooling around on him. Kind of a weird meandering story. Too many elements to maintain my interest. ( )

This is one of Shakespeare’s most convoluted plots. It combines bits and pieces from his greatest works, but in a strange way. There’s a battle to rival that in Henry V, parental ghosts like Hamlet, a jealous husband like Othello and ill-fated lovers and faked death like Romeo and Juliet. In the midst of this jumble are the old standbys, a woman pretending to be a young page and banished people living in the forest. This play is divisive among Shakespeare scholars when it comes to its categorization, some consider it a tragedy and others a romance.

King Cymbeline of Britain is furious when he finds out his only daughter, Imogen, has secretly married Posthumus Leonatus, a man from his court. He quickly banishes Posthumus from his kingdom and shortly thereafter Posthumus meets Iachimo in Italy. He tells his new friend all about his beautiful Imogen. Iachimo isn’t impressed and makes a bet with Posthumus regarding her honor. Add in a devious Queen plotting the King’s death, her horrid son Cloten, missing heirs to the throne, warring Romans and a beheading and you’ve got the gist of it.

BOTTOM LINE: A strange mishmash of Shakespearean themes, but a satisfying if contrived ending. I’d love to see this one performed, but until then I’ll have to settle for the wild ride the play takes you on. ( )

One of Shakespeare's most perplexing and unclassifiable late plays, Cymbeline is often labelled a "Romance", due to its themes of pastoralism, exile and familial reconciliation which critics notice recur throughout Shakespeare's last plays, from Pericles to The Tempest. Set in ancient Roman Britain at the court of the British king Cymbeline, the main action of the play revolves around the relationship between Cymbeline's daughter, Imogen, and Posthumous Leonatus. Attempting to marry Imogen off to Cloten, the grotesque son of Cymbeline's second wife, the king banishes Posthumous in a rage when he discovers he has secretly married Imogen. As the personal relationships in the play deteriorate, on the public stage Rome prepares to invade Britain due to Cymbeline's failure to pay tribute to his imperial master. As the play builds to its militaristic climax, Posthumous returns to Britain, where he eventually contrives a reunion with Imogen and Cymbeline's long-lost sons, who unite in their attempt to resist the might of Rome. The ending of the play, with its series of mystical riddles, unlikely coincidences and extraordinary reunions has baffled critics for centuries. Some read it as a heavy-handed political allegory of Jacobean national union under the new sovereign of the time, King James I, whilst others see in it Shakespeare pushing theatrical realism to its furthermost limits, with its decapitated bodies, complex staging and unlikely mistaken identities. Cymbeline remains a puzzling, enigmatic play. --Jerry Brotton

This "history" play of Shakespeare's is probably not part of the Tudor campaign for legitimacy, but gives a glimpse into early Britain. A headstrong woman, one of many from Shakespeare -- makes one wonder about his personal life… ( )

"Cymbeline" was one of the few Shakespeare plays that I'd never heard of before embarking on my quest to read them all. So, I really didn't have particularly high hopes that I'd enjoy it.

While certainly not amongst the bard's best works, I was surprised to find I enjoyed this play quite a bit. I found it to be well-paced and I enjoyed the interactions between the characters. It had a lot of elements that are typical Shakespeare -- from Imogen's travels disguised by man, to a sad King tossing a child out into the wild, to hidden identities that are revealed at the end.

It isn't a perfect play, as there are lots of characters floating about, making it a bit challenging to follow and the ending all sort of tumbles together (happily) for no particular reason.

That said, I still liked the overall story. ( )

Cymbeline defies the standard genre divisions in the Shakespeare corpus. It sets itself up as a tragedy, with a scheming villain defiling the reputation of a young princess (e.g., Othello), murder plots and poison. Yet, the resolution is famously happy, with the main love interests reconciled and peace between Britain and the Romans obtained.

It makes for an interesting read, but it is this happy ending which is the most common point of dispute over this work. Not only is the play a happy ending, but the circumstances seem to simply come from one speech after another laying all of the scheming bare. First, Iachimo tearfully confesses his crime, followed by the posthumous confessions of the Queen, ending in Belarius' revealing that his sons were in fact the sons of Cymbeline, and so Princes of Britain. These events happen quickly, and the plots of the book are simply pointed out in convenient speeches. I have been told that it performs far better than it reads, but the problem is not with Shakespeare challenging the genre, but rather with the rapidity and tidiness of the conclusion.

On the other hand, there is another layer present in the ending. Cymbeline takes place in the time of Caesar Augustus, and also the time of the birth of Christ. Though not referenced directly, the plays fortuitous conclusion and honorable peace indicate an era of peace dawning on a conflicted land. One might read the ending of the book as revealing the power of the Christian's savior to bring peace to the Earth.

It also lacks a powerful villain. The Queen's plots come in early, but are pushed to the side as the play progresses. Iachimo, whose betrayal of Imogen sets the main conflicts in motion, is merely a charlatan attempting to win a bet. Like the Queen, once his damage is done, he plays little role in the events. Cloten is consistently obnoxious, and when he attempts to engage in some dastardly deeds, he is promptly killed in the attempt. They play more like the villains of the comedies, whose schemes move the plot along, but who do not take center stage.

Despite these complaints, it is still a work of literary beauty, filled within Shakespearean genius. In particular, the scene where Pisanio reveals his letter from Posthumous to Imogen is gripping. It is poetic and passionate, as Imogen reveals the strength of her character, dominating the scene and Pisanio. It also contains some moving poetry, most notably the first song (II.3, 19-27):

Hark, hark, the lark at heaven's gate sings
And Phoebus gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chaliced flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-Buds begin
To ope their golden eyes.
With every thing that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise,
Arise, arise! ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1210247.html

Cymbeline is rather odd. Although it is traditionally listed as one of the Tragedies, it actually has a happy ending: the evil queen and her wicked son are dead, lost children restored, estranged spouses reunited. It's also odd that the title character is not particularly prominent in the plot: this is really the story of Cymbeline's daughter, Imogen, and her husband Postumus. (Even Julius Cæsar, killed off in the third act, looms over the rest of the play and reappears as a ghost.)

Another odd thing about Cymbeline is the music. Two of the most famous Shakespeare songs are here - 'Hark, hark, the lark' and 'Fear no more the heat of the sun' - and Act 5 Scene 1 is a musical extravaganza of Postumus's visionary dreams which almost foreshadows Gene Kelly. (Well, not really, but if you know both Cymbeline and Singin' in the Rain or An American in Paris, I hope you can see my point.) There's the occasional song elsewhere in the canon, but this is surely the Bard's most serious musical effort.

The music must make it challenging to stage, but apart from that it is a perfectly decent story. There is a glorious moment when Imogen discovers a headless corpse dressed in her husband Postumus's clothes, and assumes the worst; but it is in fact the body of the evil Cloten, slain by Imogen's own long-lost brother. Compared to the best known plays, there are not many memorable lines, which I guess explains its relative obscurity.

Arkangel don't really make the most of the material. Jack Shepherd is subdued in the title role, Sophie Thompson (Emma's sister, Eric's daughter) is rather drippy as Imogen, and I can't even remember who plays Postumus. The show is thoroughly stolen by Stephen Mangan as the Hooray Henry evil princeling Cloten, and I was sorry when his head was chopped off in the fourth act. Stephen 'Marvin' Moore was also good as the exiled family retainer Belarius. ( )

Of the Shakespeare plays I've read so far (probably about a dozen or so), this is probably my favourite. I find it difficult to pinpoint exactly why I liked it so much, but I did. The final scene, in particular, is well described as a theatrical tour de force as it relentlessly brings one revelation after another to tie up all the various subplots and bring about the reconciliation of all the still-living characters. ( )

I was heartened to read in the New York Times today that I wasn't the only one who was knocked off-course by the almost deliberately confusing plot and character interactions. ( )

Shaw disliked the complex ending, but I found it very funny. ( )

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford