The Complete Cymbeline

<p>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.</p>