ENGL2060 Lecture 10: Week 12 Lecture
Week 12 Lecture ENGL
Cymbeline – Nation and Empire
Problems:
• Female succession
• Foreign invasion
• Invested in issues of succession
• Britain as the heir to Rome
• Thinking in generic term – tragic-comedy
• Restoration of the family being restored
Play:
• First Folio 1623
• Have a play right before The Tempest
• Troubled because it feels as if everything is going to have a happy ending
• Tragivomedy – blends tragic and comedic elements
• Highly challenging to get the tone right – draws on Romance
Romance:
• Prose narratives – forerunner of novels
• Multiple plots, unlikely events, family separated, takes place in the past or mystic country,
covers many years and distances, ends with the resolution of what has been lost with
forgiveness and a sense of wonder
• 3 plots – twists all the plots together and comes together in the end thanks to the
coincidences
• By writing tragic-comedy is showing off
Howard:
• Intro - 1237
• Not an incoherent play but one that interweaves history of the nation with the stories that
of the figures that take up the positions
• Tend to focus on royal or noble families and how the nation hinges on them
• Rome and Britain are the two main countries (Rome the historic glorified one, Italy is
standard 17th century)
• Resemblance with Othello – fidelity plot that hinges on a love token
• Issue of persuasions – issue of the pastoral (escaping to the country)
Play:
• Immogen referred to as Britain – virginal and young
• Went against father – everyone sees that her choice is the right one
• Different as does not gain agency when dressed as a male – similar to Desdemona
• Raping the woman is claiming power over the nation
• Highly feminised nation – open to penetration
• Clash between two ideas (through ancestry and who is the best for the job)
