SOURCE: "Speech Acts, Generic Differences, and the Curious Case of Cymbeline," in Studies in English Literature: 1500-1900, Vol. 34, No. 2, Spring, 1994, pp. 379-99.

In this essay, Glazov-Corrigan explores the unique relationship in Cymbeline between words and actions, maintaining that linguistic analyses such as Speech Act theory are useful tools for understanding Shakespeare.

Cymbeline, one of the most unwieldy of Shakespeare's plays, exhibits a sprawling plot, an overwhelming number of characters, a striking lack of coordination between these characters and their language,¹ and a last act invariably challenging at every performance with "its twenty-four . . . dénouements,"² much hated by Bernard Shaw.³ This essay seeks to show that a striking correspondence exists between the language of the play, "so curiously mixed in [its] style of composition,"⁴ and the lack of coordination at every other level of the play. My main argument is that the hidden mechanism for this lack of unity...