Psychoanalytic Interpretations of Shakespeare's Works | Meredith Skura (essay date 1980)
Meredith Skura (essay date 1980)
SOURCE: "Interpreting Posthumus' Dream from Above and Below: Families, Psychoanalysis, and Literary Critics," in Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, edited by Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélla Kahn, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, pp. 203-16.
[In the following essay, Skura emphasizes the psychological importance of family in Shakespeare's Cymbeline.]
Shakespeare's Cymbeline is an extraordinarily complicated play, even for a romance. Set in prehistoric Britain, it combines elements of history play and Roman play, but it still ranges over an Elizabethan Italy and a timeless pastoral world in Wales. By allusion, it also ranges widely over Shakespeare's own earlier plays. Its wicked Queen evokes Lady Macbeth; Iachimo evokes Iago; and the hero Posthumus recalls Othello, although Shakespeare seems to be making mere cartoon version of those earlier complex characters.
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