The Complete Cymbeline

About the Book

Cymbeline repeats many of Shakespeare’s plot devices: “villainous slander, homicidal jealousy, cross-gender disguise, a deathlike trance, the appearance of Jupiter in a vision, and final repentance, forgiveness, and reunion” (Mowat, xiii), all of which result in an “improbable story” (Mowat, xv). As a romance, the play calls to mind the need for Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” (Biographia Literaria, quoted in Greenblatt, 478). Yet it is still Shakespeare.

About the Author

Donald J. Richardson is still trying to teach English composition at Phoenix College.