SOURCE: "The Encounter of Genres: 'Cymbeline's' Structure of Juxtaposition," in The Analysis of Literary Texts: Current Trends in Methodology, edited by Randolph D. Pope, Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1980, pp. 138-44.

In the following essay, Marx examines the structure of Cymbeline in terms of its juxtaposition of different genres.

Dr. Johnson dismissed Cymbeline as "unresisting imbecility," and only slightly politer versions of his opinion held sway until the 1930's when Shakespeare's last plays (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter's Tale, The Tempest) were first considered as a group and admired for their optimistic romantic vision, their reconciliations of kingdoms and families, of man and a beneficient Providence.¹ Yet Cymbeline is still regarded as the group's bewildering poor relation. E. M. W. Tillyard, one of the first supporters of the late plays, viewed Cymbeline as a mixture of disparate elements which blurred and ran together in a "welter of unreality," and...