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Cymbeline (Folger Shakespeare Library)
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$ 4.14
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$ 4.99 |
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Item Description...
FOLGER Shakespeare Library The world's leading center for Shakespeare studies. Each edition includes: - Freshly edited text based on the best early printed version of the play
- Full explanatory notes conveniently placed on pages facing the text of the play
- Scene-by-scene plot summaries
- A key to famous lines and phrases
- An introduction to reading Shakespeare's language
- An essay by an outstanding scholar providing a modern perspective on the play
- Illustrations from the Folger Shakespeare Library's vast holdings of rare books
Essay by Cynthia Marshall The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., is home to the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works, and a magnet for Shakespeare scholars from around the globe. In addition to exhibitions open to the public throughout the year, the Folger offers a full calendar of performances and programs. For more information, visit www.folger.edu.
At GoodNews Christian Bookstore, we have possibly the lowest prices anywhere! Discount on books and bibles is 25%. Checkout our church supplies page! We are cheaper than Lifeway and Family Christian. Shop with confidence! Blessings, Bill |
Item Specifications...
Pages 368
Dimensions: Length: 1.25" Width: 4.25" Height: 6.75"
Weight: 0.4 lbs.
Binding Softcover
Release Date May 1, 2003
Publisher Simon & Schuster
ISBN 067172259X
EAN 9780671722593
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Availability 14 units.
Availability accurate as of May 26, 2012 10:50.
Usually ships within one to two business days from Commerce GA.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Choppy, Atypical Shakespeare For Bard Lovers Only Apr 10, 2010 |
The feeling I got reading "Cymbeline" the first time was that this was factory-second Shakespeare, as worthy of the term "problem play" as any. A second reading modifies this somewhat. You get used to its odd twists and turns, its often unlyrical quality. Good things pop up here and there. If the narrative never gels, it does keep moving and winds up in an interesting place.
The gooniness of "Cymbeline" is established early on. The title character, King of England just after a time of Roman rule, banishes from his reign Posthumus, husband of his only daughter, Imogen. Cymbeline is angered she did not choose her own stepbrother, the miserable Cloten. "Away!/Thou'rt poison to my blood," Cymbeline demands. Exiled in Italy, Posthumus gambles rashly on Imogen's virtue and pays a steep price despite her faithfulness. While Imogen comes to grief, Cymbeline dispenses with Roman extortion and faces a massive invasion.
Cymbeline has the feeling of a Shakespearean mash-up. You have the sundered young lovers from "Romeo and Juliet", a cruel assault on a good woman's virtue like "Othello", and a mad monarch a la "King Lear" who is twisted by a conniving queen who seems an even nastier variant on Lady MacBeth. There's also ghosts, a beheading, women disguised as men, and a left-field appearance by Jupiter to sort everything out.
It's all too much, especially when presented by Shakespeare at a sometimes headlong, sometimes frustratingly talky pace. The story really goes off the rails when we meet a rustic man and his two young companions who turn out to be Cymbeline's lost sons. None of this feels grounded in reality, yet it doesn't really soar as fantasy, either. Many point out Jupiter's cameo as a low moment, though Cloten's transformation from comic butt to dead would-be rapist is more jarring.
Cloten does have a couple of fun early moments, bragging about himself to two unctuous lords. One makes wisecracks as asides. "Would he have been one of my rank!" Cloten declares after a near-duel with Posthumus.
"To have smelled like a fool" the sneering lord answers.
A little later, Imogen takes heart at her sad situation: "Plenty and peace breed cowards; hardness ever/Of hardiness is mother." Imogen and Posthumus are complex central characters, and in the old Pelican edition I have, Robert B. Heilman advances Imogen as one of Shakespeare's best-realized romantic heroines. Of the play itself, Heilman is understandably more guarded: "Nothing lags; nothing stands still".
Nothing makes that much sense, either, but it's a ride worth taking if you are interested in Shakespeare making one-time use of a historical setting (Roman Britain) or the idea of him struggling circa 1609 to develop a new post-tragic dramatic form, the so-called tragicomedy, although it's more properly termed a romance and quite different from the later, more sophisticated works "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest".
If you have the time, the patience, and the passion for Shakespeare, you may like "Cymbeline" more than me. But I doubt you will come away thinking it unfairly overlooked. | | | | You're all missing the point... Feb 15, 2010 |
| I think you're all missing the point (or a bunch of ringers from digireads.com). What we have here is the basic text derived a scanned version of the play, with no background information on how the text came to be. It's a decent enough interpretation, but with absolutely no editorial assistance to understand the language or the context in which the ideas of the author are set forth. Definitely better than nothing, though. | | |  | One Of Shakespeare's More Challenging Works Nov 2, 2009 |
| Cymbeline is one of the later Shakespeare plays that is rarely staged and probably even as rarely read. The plot has elements that are familiar from several of the earlier works and many of the characters borrow from more familiar characters in other plays as well. Nevertheless, Cymbeline is a rewarding play to either view or read. The Arden version that I recently read was useful but for the footnotes which focused on various usages and interpretations of the language over time which I found distracting and finally chose to just ignore. The play itself because of the familiar elements will appeal to those who have read the better known works. Cymbeline revolves around a layered plot that includes the devices of mistaken identity, evil and deception , unbridled ambition and political intrigue. It is a rather long play with 5 acts and 27 scenes. Having the benefit of seeing this well staged would enhance the reader's experience. | | |  | Worst and least favorite Shakespeare; boring to the nth degree May 18, 2009 |
| My least favorite Shakespeare--long, tedious, boring and highly distasteful. Didn't catch my interest whatsoever; this was the first Shakespeare I read that I seriously had to force myself to continue and kept thinking "enough already!" Too drawn out and more difficult to read than his others. Stick with Pericles Prince of Tyre (The Pelican Shakespeare). | | |  | Thick on Plot; Thin on Character Jan 5, 2008 |
Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare's least performed and least read plays. You do not stumble on it, you work your way through Shakespeare's opus and finally get there. The historical context is the war between Britain and the Roman Empire, and the action is hot and heavy, requiring five acts and twenty-seven scenes. Perhaps it is this complexity of plot that retarded Shakespeare's character development. Fewer lines have entered our lexicon from this play than most. Two exceptions are "the tongue is sharper than the sword," and to have "a bellyful of fighting." It is an excellent tragedy, however, combining elements of King Lear and elements of Othello. In its mystic elements it also resembles The Tempest.
The core of the plot is the bet between Posthumous, the king's son, and Iachimo, who wagers ten thousand ducats that he can seduce Posthumous' wife, Imogen. Posthumous, in turn, wagers a ring that Imogen has given him that Iachimo will not succeed. Initially, we amused by the idea, but upon further reflection, it is clear that the gambit cannot have a happy ending. Either the seduction is successful, breaking up the marriage, or it isn't, in which case Iachimo will certainly claim that he has secuced Imogen, simply to win the ring. In the process he sets himself the Iago-like task of converting love to hate.
The play is also full of classic Shakespearean gadgetry, including a potion that causes a trance resembling death, mystical soothsayers, the intervention of gods, women disguised as men, and a historical tableau which would have been familiar to Shakespeare's audience. It is a quintessential Shakespearean play, comprising nearly all of the classical elements of tragedy. If the plot could have been pruned, and the characters given more of the dimensionality that we expect from Shakespeare, Cymbeline would stand on a higher pedestal.
The Folger Shakespeare Library's annotated edition is excellent. It provides just the right notation on the page facing the text, and can be studied or ignored to suit the reader's purpose.
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