From The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors, ed. Charles Wells Moulton, 8 vols. (Buffalo, NY: Moulton Publishing, 1901), 1: 536-38. [This section was prepared and proofread by Deborah Hill.]
CYMBELINE
1610-12
This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues. and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity. To remark 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, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.--JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 1768, General Observations on Shakspeare's Plays.
"Cymbeline" is one of the most delight ful of Shakespear's historical plays.... We have almost as great an affection for Imogen as she had for Posthumus; and she deserves it better. Of all Shakespear's women she is perhaps the most tender and the most artless. Her incredulity in the opening scene with Iachimo as to her husband's infidelity, is much thesame as Desdemona's backwardness to believe Othello's jealousy. Her answer to the most distressing part of the picture is only, "My lord, I fear, has forgot Britain." Her readiness to pardon Iachimo's false imputations and his designs against herself, is a good lesson to prudes; an may show that where there is a reattachment to virtue, it has no need to bolster itself up with an outrageous or affected antipathy to vice.--HAZLITT, WILLIAM, 1817-69, Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, pp. 1-3.
On the whole, Imogen is a lovely compound of goodness, truth, and affection with just so much of passion and intellect and poetry, as serve to lend to the picture that power and glowing richness of effect which it would otherwise have wanted; and of her it might be said, if we could condescend to quote from any other poet with Shakspeare open before us, that "her person was a paradise and her soul the cherub to guard it."--JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1832, Characteristics of Women.
This play is perhaps the fittest in Shakspeare's whole theatre to illustrate the principle, that great dramatic genius can occasionally venture on bold improbabilities, and yet not only shrive the offense, but leave us enchanted with the offender. I think I exaggerate not, in saying that Shakspeare has nowhere breathed more pleasurable feelings over the mind, as an antidote to tragic pain, than in "Cymbeline."--CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1838, ed., Shakspearets Plays, Moxon ed., Life.
The play of plays, which is "Cymbeline," remains alone to receive the last salute of all my love I think, as far as I can tell, I may say I have always loved this one beyond ail other children of Shakespeare.--SWINBURNE, ALGERNON CHARLES, 1880, A Study of Shakespeare, p, 225.
Yet the play is not merely a series of beautiful pictures, or interesting episodes, such as we are accustomed to find in the productions of dramatists of less renown. Here, as elsewhere in Shakespeare, everything is subservient to the development of character. From this point of view every scene contributes its share to the denouement, nor is there any falling off observable in the power of the artist, the master-hand is as discernible in these latest creations as in those of any earlier period. And he has put forth all his strength on the central figure of the drama, the matchless Imogen, to speak of whom is to sing one long paean of praise, and whose very name is as full of music as her voice. In her is to be found everything that makes woman lovable, and there is no situation in which she is placed which does not reveal some fresh beauty in her character.--EVANS, H. A., 1887-90, Henry Irving Shakespeare, vol. VII, p. 86.
This play is peculiarly a play of regeneration, and shows in manifold characters the process by which the soul is to free itself of its weak, inadequate, sinful phases. We find here, even the unregenerate Cloten and his mother, who persist in evil and perish, though they, too, have the same chance as the rest. They can not be mediated, they make the Inferno in this comedy, which, in certain respects, is Dantean. But the chief realm here is the Purgatory, which shows the erring man in the process of regeneration. Many forms he takes, from the demon Iachimo through Posthumus, the King, Belarius, up to even the good ones, Imogen and Pisanio; all are going through the purgatorial discipline. Shakespeare's Purgatory, however, includes the guiltless and the guilty, in this being different from Dante's, the sinless have to suffer for and through the sinful, thereby attaining to completeness and passing from mere innocence to positive goodness. But we have also a touch of the primitive Paradise in the two youths and their mountain home. Theirs is the state of first innocence, without knowledge, but they thirst for experience, and quit their paradisaical abode, having the old Adam in them still. Thus the play completes the cycle of the I human, if not of the divine, comedy.--SNIDER, DENTON JAQUES, 1887, The Shakespearian Drama, The Comedies, p. 542.
The skill of the dramatist in opening his story, and preparing by clear touches for effects to be produced as it draws near the close, is a marked feature in all plays of Shakespeare, and nowhere more marked than in "Cymbeline." MORLEY, HENRY AND GRIFFIN, W. HALL, 1895, English Writers, vol. XI, p. 139.
In depth and variety of colouring, in richness of matter, profundity of thought, and heedlessness of conventional canons "Cymbeline" has few rivals among Shakespeare's plays. Fascinating as it is, however, this tragi-comedy has never been very popular on the stage. The great public, indeed, has neither studied nor understood it. BRANDES, GEORGE, 1898, William Shakespeare, A Critical Study, vol. II, p. 323.
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