SOURCE: "Cymbeline and the Validity of Myth," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXV, No. 3, July, 1978, pp. 316-30.

In the following essay, Carr maintains that Shakespeare sought to explore the effects of myth on the human pysche in Cymbeline through his allusions to stories of death and resurrection.

The complex plot of Cymbeline incorporates a large number of situations paralleled in myths and folk tales, often with bizarre twists that suggest Shakespeare is composing a playful, sophisticated scherzo on archetypal themes. However, the theatrical experimentation in this play is not merely playful or self-indulgent. Cymbeline is a probing, often rueful questioning of the mythic habit of thought and of its ability to make sense of the human condition. Its fully psychologized, warmly human heroine is forced to live and act in a capricious fairytale world so that her flesh-and-blood reactions may serve as a skeptical probing of the consoling...