Cymbeline (Vol. 47) - Deception, Misperception, And Disguise
DECEPTION, MISPERCEPTION, AND DISGUISE
John Scott Colley (essay date 1974)
SOURCE: "Disguise and New Guise in Cymbeline" in Shakespeare Studies: An Annual Gathering of Research, Criticism, and Reviews, Vol. VII, No. 1974, pp. 233-52.
[In the essay below, Colley examines the significance of Shakespeare's use of costume and disguise in Cymbeline as they relate to the characterization, action, and theme of the play.]
W. W. Lawrence felt that the central problem of dramatic characterization in Cymbeline could be resolved in only one way. Modern readers must imagine the play as the Elizabethans understood it, "as they saw it on the stage":
Posthumus and Imogen and Iachimo are too often treated as if they were persons of the nineteenth century, and their acts interpreted like those of characters in a modern realistic novel, instead of a tale the outlines and spirit of which had been determined...
[The entire page is 28301 words long]
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