When was Cymbeline first performed and who recorded it?
The first recorded performance of Cymbeline took place in April 1611, as noted by the diarist Simon Forman in his eyewitness account. The play was first published in the First Folio in 1623.
Questions about Cymbeline
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What are the main sources Shakespeare used to write Cymbeline?
Shakespeare drew primarily on the 1587 edition of Holinshed's Chronicles for the play's British setting and the character of Cymbeline. The wager plot involving Posthumus and Iachimo derives from story II.9 of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron and the anonymous Frederyke of Jennen. The subplot of Belarius and the lost princes was inspired by The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune, first performed in 1582.
How is Cymbeline classified , is it a tragedy, comedy, or romance?
Cymbeline is listed as a tragedy in the First Folio published in 1623, but modern critics often classify it as a romance or comedy. Like Othello and The Winter's Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy.
What did George Bernard Shaw say about Cymbeline?
Shaw called Cymbeline "stagey trash of the lowest melodramatic order" in 1896, but later revised his view, writing in 1946 that it was "one of the finest of Shakespeare's later plays". He maintained throughout that the final act "goes to pieces", and in 1937 he rewrote it as Cymbeline Refinished.
Why do some scholars say the character's name should be Innogen rather than Imogen?
The editors of the Oxford and Norton Shakespeare argue that Imogen is a misprint for Innogen. Holinshed's Chronicles, one of Shakespeare's confirmed sources, mentions an Innogen by name, and Simon Forman's eyewitness account of the April 1611 performance uses Innogen throughout. Most editions have nonetheless continued to print Imogen.
What has made the funeral song from Cymbeline so culturally enduring?
The funeral song beginning "Fear no more the heat o' the sun" from Act IV, Scene 2 has been quoted in novels by Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett, Agatha Christie, and Anton Myrer, and has been set to music by Roger Quilter in 1921, Gerald Finzi in 1942, and John Dankworth in a 1964 recording with Cleo Laine. Stephen Sondheim also used it in The Frogs, where Shakespeare sings it when asked about death.