SOURCE: “Interpreting Posthumus' Dream from Above and Below: Families, Psychoanalysis, and Literary Critics,” in Representing Shakespeare: New Psychoanalytic Essays, edited by Murray M. Schwartz and Coppélia Kahn, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, pp. 203-16.

In the following essay, Skura examines the conflict between family inheritance and personal individuality via the character of Posthumus.

Shakespeare's Cymbeline is an extraordinarily complicated play, even for a romance. Set in prehistoric Britain, it combines elements of history play and Roman play, but it still ranges over an Elizabethan Italy and a timeless pastoral world in Wales. By allusion, it also ranges widely over Shakespeare's own earlier plays. Its wicked Queen evokes Lady Macbeth; Iachimo evokes Iago; and the hero Posthumus recalls Othello, although Shakespeare seems to be making mere cartoon versions of those earlier complex characters.

If the external allusions are complicated, the on-stage action is even more so. There are more...