Review: Cymbeline
At The Globe Theatre, London, 23.2.2025
All was finally right for fair England yesterday at The Globe.
The once popular, but more recently unfashionable, Shakespeare play Cymbeline is currently playing at The Globe.
I caught the matinee yesterday and it was my first viewing.
On the day, the production found itself down two players, who were substituted for by readers. This added another layer of drama, and both were warmly congratulated by the audience for keeping the show on the road.
The standard criticisms of Cymbeline are that Shakespeare recycled prior content (which artist doesn't?), insincerely parodied himself, and that his plot is overly dense and in parts too convenient to be credible.
Harold Bloom describes it as more of a poem than a play. He also observes its absurdist qualities and suggests that it is at odds with itself:
"Part of the fascination of Cymbeline is the reader's (and playgoer's) sense that something is wayward about this drama; it will not abide a steady contemplation."
Shakespeare and the Invention of the Human, 1998
This production did not at first illustrate these points, except perhaps the plot one, but personally I never over trouble myself with the specifics of Shakespeare's plot lines. They feel like a distraction from the words, on the first pass at least, but this could be my tragic flaw.
It might also be true that this play of court intrigue, vassal statism, bullying foreign powers, relationship paranoia, and finally of national accommodation, is one of Shakespeare's less coherent plays.
Still, I warmed to The Globe's warm interpretation.
At the heart of it we find a cosy image of a merry but tough and true English people. The Globe also leans into an feminist depiction of the double standards of patriarchal court power.
Imogen, the King’s lost daughter - who is depicted in an earlier production above - is the embodiment of feminine virtue and honour, but she must become a man temporarily to triumph.
Some excellent familiar Globe faces graced our wooden, candle lit, stage yesterday, as well as some new ones. Pierro Niel-Mee in particular stood out as the deliciously obnoxious but finally repentant Iachimo. He is a gifted Shakespearean actor to watch out for.
Inventive scoring, and practical sound effects, also contributed to the intimate power of this production.
In the original text King Cymbeline ends the play victorious, with nation and family both mighty, united and gathered around the forgiving national sun he is. This, and the depiction of pure feminine virtue with Imogen, might explain why the English Victorians so loved the play.
"Laud we the gods,
And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils
From our blest altars. Publish we this peace
To all our subjects. Set we forward. Let
A Roman and a British ensign wave
Friendly together. So through Lud’s Town march,
And in the temple of great Jupiter
Our peace we’ll ratify, seal it with feasts.
Set on there. Never was a war did cease,
Ere bloody hands were washed, with such a peace."
So says our King to conclude proceedings. This poetic glossing of the prior conflicts is perhaps hard to bear after so much good blood has been spilled. Maybe Bloom was correct after all, he often is. The tension he sees in the play certainly existed in my mind by the end.
Tickets can be purchased here. The play runs until 20th April.
Photograph: Ellen Terry as Imogen in 'Cymbeline' by Window & Grove, 1896. Copyright National Portrait Gallery and used with thanks under the Creative Commons license.