Books with title Cymbeline: A Play

Cymbeline, the Roman Empire's vassal king of Britain, once had two sons, Guiderius and Arvirargus, but they were stolen twenty years earlier as infants by an exiled traitor named Belarius. Cymbeline now discovers that his only child left, his daughter Imogen, has secretly married her lover Posthumus Leonatus, an otherwise honourable man of Cymbeline's court. This edition of Cymbeline is an adaptation of Shakespeare's eponymous drama, narrated in plain modern English, capturing the very essence and key elements of the original Shakespeare's work. Read in English, unabridged.

"Cymbeline" by William Shakespeare. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare, based on an early Celtic British King. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify it as a romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While its date of composition is unknown, the play is known to have been produced as early as 1611.

The King of Britain, enraged by his daughter’s disobedience in marrying against his wishes, banishes his new son-in-law. Having fled to Rome, the exiled husband makes a foolish wager with a villain he encounters there - gambling on the fidelity of his abandoned wife. Combining courtly menace and horror, comedy and melodrama, Cymbeline is a moving depiction of two young lovers driven apart by deceit and self-doubt.

Cymbeline, one of Shakespeare's most ambitious and complicated plays, tells the story of a mythic king of England, Cymbeline, who reigned during the first century A.D. Its several plots trace the tribulations of the King and his royal family on several different levels: on one, the King's daughter, Imogen, marries Posthumus Leonatus, a noble but rather indigent lord, against her father's wishes; on another, Cymbeline defies Caius Lucius of the Roman Empire, who demands tribute from England. Another plot, adapted from Boccaccio's Decameron, concerns the framing of Imogen for adultery; and yet another traces the restoration to royalty of Cymbeline's long-lost sons, Arvigarus and Guiderius.Cymbeline is generally thought to have been written and first performed in 1609-10, placing the play after his last period of tragedies such as Pericles (1608-9) and Timon of Athens (1607-8) and directly before his final sole-authorship plays, The Winter's Tale (1610-11) and The Tempest (1611). Those latter two plays are generally acknowledged to be masterpieces of Shakespeare's late Romance genre. Cymbeline, to be frank, isn't. For centuries it was looked upon as one of Shakespeare's weakest works--unnecessarily complex in its plot and unusually forceless in its poetry. The famous critic Samuel Johnson wrote in his General Observations on the Plays of Shakespeare(1756): "To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names...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." This damning judgment was echoed in the twentieth century by the playwright George Bernard Shaw.Recent critics, however, have not been so quick to dismiss Cymbeline. The play's absurdities, which Johnson took umbrage at, are indeed abundant. But Johnson, writing during the so-called "Age of Reason", objected to A Midsummer Night's Dream--perhaps the most popular Shakespearean play of all--for the same sort of farfetchedness. Sympathetic critics have emphasized the way in which Cymbelineseems to be aware, so to speak, of its own excessive artificiality and theatricality. In other words, Cymbeline doesn't fail to be realistic because it isn't trying to be realistic. In this light, its wild disregard for continuity, baroque plot, and constant mixing of tragedy and comedy can be considered essential rather than detrimental to the play's purpose.Cymbeline is best read, at least until one adapts to its peculiar attractions, in light of its place among Shakespeare's more well-known works. As J.M. Nosworthey argues, the play represents a great experiment of sorts: the invention of the Romance genre. Books upon books have been written attempting to nail down the niceties of Shakespearean Romance, but the hallmark of Shakespearean Romance is fairly simple: in his romances, Shakespeare mixes comic, historical and tragic qualities together, expressing all of them at the same time. He had already introduced tragic elements to comedy--think of the sex extortion in Measure for Measure--and comic elements to tragedy--the drunken porter in Macbeth or the gravediggers in Hamlet. However, he had never combined these two forces into one expressive mode until Cymbeline (or, some argue, Pericles, which is Cymbeline's direct precursor). Thus, in this reading, the play's overwrought absurdity is the understandable result of experimental genre-bending that Shakespeare would come to master in his final Romances.It is not necessary to place Cymbeline in the context of Shakespeare's other, perhaps better plays to see that it has merits of its own. Foremost among these is the play's heroine, Imogen.

Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare, based on an early Celtic British King. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify it as a romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While its date of composition is unknown, the play is known to have been produced as early as 1611.

Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare, based on an early Celtic British King. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify it as a romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While its date of composition is unknown, the play is known to have been produced as early as 1611.

Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare, based on an early Celtic British King. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify it as a romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While its date of composition is unknown, the play is known to have been produced as early as 1611.

Cymbeline is a play by William Shakespeare, based on an early Celtic British King. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify it as a romance. Like Othello, Measure for Measure, and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While its date of composition is unknown, the play is known to have been produced as early as 1611. (From Wikipedia)it is very interusting story......

"Cymbeline" is one of the great comedy plays by William Shakespeare and one of his later ones. Near the end of his career, William Shakespeare wrote a group of beautiful and confounding plays that did not easily fit into any of his previously chosen genres, or categories of literature. These plays are neither tragedies nor comedies, though they contain elements of both at times. They also often feature exotic locations, elaborate special effects, and magic. Shakespearean critics have classified this group as Shakespeare's romances. One of these romances is "Cymbeline", first performed around 1611.Gullible Cymbeline, King of Britain, takes a new wife who has an arrogant son called Cloten. Cymbeline's beautiful daughter Imogen is expected to marry Cloten. Instead Imogen marries the brave, but poor Posthumus Leonatus. Cymbeline is furious when he finds out about the marriage and banishes Posthumus who goes to Rome. The couple have time to exchange love tokens and Imogen gives Posthumus a diamond ring and he gives her a bracelet. The villain of the plot is Iachimo who bets 10,000 ducats against Posthumus's diamond ring that he can seduce Imogen. Various plot lines ensue involving deceit, cross-dressing, poison and treachery. The story has a happy ending when Iachimo confesses and Imogen reveals her true identity and is reunited with Posthumus.