The Complete Cymbeline: An Annotated Edition of the Shakespeare Play

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.