SOURCE: "Dreams as History: The Strange Unity of Cymbeline," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 1, Spring, 1982, pp. 68-79.

In the following essay, Landry examines the thematic link between dreams and the historical unity of Cymbeline.

Cymbeline is most remarkably a play about dreams, about the various and often inexplicable functions of the unconscious mind. It is also a romance, a history play, and a tragicomic pastoral. Naturally, critics have found it difficult to interpret the play in any unified way, difficult to assign it any governing structure. Most are still in tacit agreement with Johnson, who deplored its "incongruity" and "unresisting imbecility"; even critics who claim some fondness for its oddities tend to explore particular aspects, leaving the unwieldy bulk of the threefold plot largely unexplained.¹ Frank Kermode and Northrop Frye, respectively, have come closer to pinning down the play's peculiar tone by calling it "experimental,"² and "academic," with...