SOURCE: Bruster, Douglas. “Cymbeline and the Sudden Blow.” Upstart Crow 10 (1990): 101-12.

In the following essay, Bruster examines scenes in Cymbeline that strongly suggest the drama's parody of the romance genre and question viewer tolerance for violence.

At the first performance of its latest Stratford revival tonight the audience laughed at the primitive ravelling of the loose ends of a careless plot.

(1962 Stratford Production)

In 1968 I saw Cymbeline at the Oregon Shakespearean Festival in Ashland and the audience disturbed me by laughing as the dozen odd strands of the mingled yarn of the plot were unravelled in the complicated denouement of the play.

From this point (i.e., the ‘headless man’ scene) the audience seemed to feel the lid was off, allowing them to laugh freely at any part of the play's remaining scenes. … When Jupiter appeared, amid clouds of dense smoke and astride a golden eagle, the theater...