Cymbeline

Content Group

Overview
Cymbeline: Imogen at the Cave

Critics, scholars, and directors have mostly found the character of this play hard to define and interpret. Because of its fanciful plot it has been bracketed with other late plays as a "romance" but many details have precedents in the earlier plays: rejected by her father, an innocent wife is mistakenly repudiated by a jealous husband after malicious accusations, but seems to rise from the dead after adventures while disguised as a boy. However, it is also a history play, dealing with further events in the reign of the dominant Octavius of Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, now dignified as Caesar Augustus, but whose armies were defeated by rebels at the opposite end of his empire from Egypt, led by Cymbeline, an historical king in pre-Roman Britain. Most people find the loyal and brave Imogen very appealing (see Miss Kemble, Ellen Terry, and Julia Marlowe in the role) but many of the male roles involve gross misconduct (see Edwin Booth as Posthumus, Thomas Mead as Iachimo, and Anthony Ward as Iachimo). The complexities of the plot seem designed to create the endless reversals of the last scene which baffle the participants but flatter the audience's superior knowledge. The elusiveness of final truth convinces the King to declare universal peace: "Pardon's the word to all" (5.5.422)—a sentiment amply appropriate to a reign synchronous with the birth of Christ, which is perhaps the clue to the basic theme of this eccentric tragicomedy. Modern audiences are drawn to its unpredictability.

Images
Cymbeline, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1997
Cymbeline, Royal Shakespeare Company, 1997
Cymbeline, Atlanta Shakespeare Company, 2005
Cymbeline, Edward Gordon Craig as Arviragus, Lyceum Theatre, 1896
Cymbeline, Julia Marlowe as Imogen, 1894
Regent's Park Open-Air Theatre: Cymbeline Production
Slideshows
Play Settings: Prehistoric Britain
Commentary
Essay Title Author
"Cymbeline" as Resolution of a Tragic Cycle Hugh Richmond
The Land of Cymbeline: Original Catuvellauni Territory in Britain Hugh Richmond
Bibliography

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Brantley, Ben. "Simply Shakespeare, No Tangled Web." Review of Cymbeline, New Victory Theatre, New York. New York Times, January 18, 2011.

Carlisle, Carol J. "Macready's Production of Cymbeline." In Shakespeare and the Victorian Stage, edited by Richard Foulkes, 138-52. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Desmet, Christy. "Shakespearean Comic Character: Ethos and Epideictic in Cymbeline." In Acting Funny: Comic Theory and Practice in Shakespeare's Plays, edited by Frances Teague, 123-41. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994.

Eaton, Barbara Louise. "Shakespeare's Imogen: The Development of a Starring Role." Shakespeare Bulletin 13 (1995): 28-29.

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Jacobs, Henry E. Cymbeline. Garland Shakespeare Bibliography. New York; London: Garland, 1982.

Jacobs, Henry E. "Rewriting Shakespeare: the Framing of Cymbeline." Renaissance Papers (1983): 79-87.

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Richmond, Hugh M. "Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy: The Climax in Cymbeline." Studies in the Literary Imagination 1 (April 1972): 129-39.

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Swander, Homer. "Cymbeline: Religious Idea and Dramatic Design." In Pacific Coast Studies in Shakespeare, edited by Waldo F. McNeir and Thelma N. Greenfield, 248-62. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Press, 1966 .

Cymbeline at Talkin' Broadway.

Thompson, Ann. "Cymbeline's Other Endings." In The Appropriation of Shakespeare: Post-Renaissance Reconstructions of the Works and the Myth, edited by Jean I. Marsden, 203-20. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991.

Walter, Harriet. "Imogen in Cymbeline." In Players of Shakespeare 3: Further Essays in Shakespearean Performance by Twelve Players with the Royal Shakespeare Company, edited by Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood, 201-19. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Warren, Roger. Cymbeline. Shakespeare in Performance. Manchester, UK; New York: Manchester University Press, 1989.

Warren, Roger. "Theatrical Virtuosity and Poetic Complexity in Cymbeline." Shakespeare Survey 29 (1976): 41-49.

Wayne, Valerie. "Cymbeline: Patriotism and Performance." In A Companion to Shakespeare's Works, vol. 4, edited by Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard, 389-440. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.

Wickham, Glynne. "Riddle and Emblem: A Study in the Dramatic Structure of Cymbeline." In English Renaissance Studies Presented to Dame Helen Gardner in Honour of Her Seventieth Birthday, edited by John Carey and Helen Peters, 94-113. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.

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