|
|
|
|
|
Cymbeline is one of Shakespeare's best-kept secrets-epic, magical, redemptive. The play, we found, is, little known, so we sought out authors for this issue whose reflections would introduce our readers to this great work. We began with fairy tales, for they are the foundation of Cymbeline. And few peoplein the world understand fairy tales better than Jack Zipes, the scholar of children's literature, who spoke with us about the play and the evolution of the fairy tale. "Ever since people could speak, they have been telling stories," he said. Cymbeline draws on this ancient oral tradition-combining fairy tales, mythology, and riddles. We discovered the play has resonated with many great artists and thinkers in Western culture. Cymbeline was beloved by Alfred Tennyson, who was buried with his copy of the play; it surfaces in James Joyce's Ulysses; and the scholar Edward Mendelson writes of how two lines from Cymbeline haunt Mrs. Dalloway, in Virginia Woolf's famous novel: "Fear no more the heat o' the sun/Nor the furious winter's rages." These lines are echoed in Samuel Beckett's play Happy Days. Cymbeline is a beautiful, sweeping play that has been seared into our collective imagination.
The play marries so many seemingly disparate elements, from its style-part tragedy, part comedy, part history-to its many worlds: the English court, ancient Rome, and a magical forest. Mark Lamos, Cymbeline's director, brings this rich panoply into focus. Jess Goldstein, Cymbeline's costume designer, shares the challenges of "creating a whole civilization." The composer Ned Rorem spoke to us about writing music for other art forms: theater, poetry, and film. The writer Tara Ison surprises with her personal revelation of Shakespeare's relevance today.
We were particularly fascinated by the ways in which late works generally distinguish themselves from
an artist's earlier endeavors. Written toward the end of Shakespeare's career, Cymbeline features characters and themes from his earlier plays. Anne Cattaneo, the dramaturg of this production, illuminates these parallels, and in a famous lecture that we reprint here, W. H. Auden observes the spirit of reconciliation that infuses Shakespeare's late plays. The art historian and biographer John Richardson picks up on this theme in his discussion of Picasso's late work, which possessed its own magic.
Cymbeline is a glorious culmination of Shakespeare's work that takes audiences into territory that is at once familiar and newly imagined.
- The Editors
|
|
|
