Cymbeline (Vol. 47) - History And Politics
HISTORY AND POLITICS
Hugh M. Richmond (essay date 1972)
SOURCE: "Shakespeare's Roman Trilogy: The Climax in Cymbeline" in Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. V, No. 1, April, 1972, pp. 129-39.
[In the following essay, Richmond evaluates Cymbeline as a drama concerned with natural law and its transformation by Christianity.]
The New Arden editor asserts that "Cymbeline has evoked relatively little critical comment, and no completely satisfactory account of the play's quality and significance can be said to exist."1 Another recent editor proves even more pessimistic when he accepts Johnson's view, which concedes a few incidental virtues to the play but considers them scarcely compensation for "the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life."2 Both these recent...
[The entire page is 12836 words long]
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