Although the chronology of Shakespeare’s works is as debatable as everything else about him, what seems certain is that those plays known as “romances” or “tales” came after his great tragedies and were the last that he wrote. They are a small, and for various reasons, enigmatic group, comprised of Cymbeline, Pericles, Prince of Tyre, A Winter’s Tale and, the last according to legend, The Tempest. Cymbeline is generally considered to have been the first (dated around 1609 if we were to take the median of all those that have been suggested). It shows a mature, and perhaps by then weary, writer throwing caution to the wind as he leans experimentally towards a new genre.
In Shakespeare’s works, this genre contains elements of both folktales and the peripeteia of Greek narrative. They share the common themes of reunion and reconciliation among parents, children, siblings, and lovers who have been assumed dead, sometimes for many years. They take place in the pre-Christian era (in The Tempest the anachronism achieves perfect atemporality). The gods do not hesitate to make a dramatic appearance on stage. Chastity is the moral axis around which the themes revolve, journeys propel the action along, and the sea becomes increasingly important across the plays.
It is difficult to imagine why Shakespeare started to write these types of plays at this stage in his career. The idea that he was exhausted creatively is refuted by the quality and spirit of their invention. Indeed, these are not plays that would have been easier to write, but rather much more challenging. The plots are particularly unsuitable for dramatic staging. They take place over great distances and over the course of many years, thus allowing lost children to grow into adults and for lovers to be separated by entire continents, and the delicate, psychological movements of recognition, guilt and forgiveness are more novelesque than theatrical.
It is worth considering the hypothesis that during this period his company may have needed plays that were more suited to an indoor theater, especially one with a courtly audience and requiring elaborate sets. Any supposition regarding factors that are external to the works themselves is always a matter of debate. (The idea that the gods only appeared in the plays because improvements in machinery finally allowed them to move across the stage and that the gods’ appearance brought with it the dramatic turn of events that made their intervention necessary is very appealing.)
It is perhaps the theme of reconciliation that allows the timing of these plays to be understood. Related to this, there is something else that is evident on closer reading. The happy ending, the reunion of loved ones who are believed to be dead, the recovery of love, of a life misspent through error and carelessness—these triumphs are not due to the characters’ actions; instead, they have been decided from the beginning by an all-powerful and benevolent creator who invented everything. Cymbeline’s Jupiter is an imperfect foreshadowing of Prospero. The trials and tribulations that the characters have to overcome are merely that: challenges from which they are not obliged to emerge victorious. It is not necessary for them to be steadfast, skilled, or wise. On the contrary, the purpose of their mistakes is to provoke the delectable concerns of fiction.
This is what I see as the defining characteristic of these final works. What makes them such a valuable part of Shakespeare’s collected corpus is that they are dramas that present themselves precisely as such; exquisite artifices that suspend our disbelief, only for a knowing smile at the end to reassure us that “this is not the world, it is just the stage.”
Cymbeline’s incredibly complicated nature could be a result of Shakespeare’s still uncertain handling of themes more commonly addressed in novels. There are three or four threads running through the work that are barely linked. First, there is the wife Imogen’s commitment to chastity, which fills out the first two acts. This scenario is widely known and can be found in Boccaccio’s Decameron, although Shakespeare’s inspiration came from another source. Second, there are the lost princes, which is a theme from folklore. Third, there is the historical content (King Cymbeline, a contemporary to Augustus, had tax disputes with Rome), which Shakespeare took from the Holinshed’s chronicles, his usual source. Finally, there is the family drama situated in the royal court: the queen, who is a classic stepmother sorceress from fairy tales; her son, who is somewhat unworthy; and the beautiful princess, who is the victim.
The intertwining of these threads supports criticism such as that given by Nosworthy in the prologue to his edition: “impossible adventures of unreal people in promiscuous surroundings.” However, this is completely incidental; to take it seriously would be like confusing the premise of either Hamlet or Macbeth for fantasies about the workings of a theater. The complications here serve the endings that they generate. Cymbeline is, in this sense, unique.
The marvelous final scene is an unsurpassed display of dramatic virtuosity, a cascading succession of no fewer than twenty-four endings. The most admirable aspect, however, is not that nothing is left unresolved, but that no misunderstanding has been resolved before this point. A “normal” author would not have resisted the temptation to buy himself a little time by clearing up along the way some of the errors—all of which are “blind spots” of varying sorts, the partial ignorance of one or more characters. Shakespeare allows these errors to accumulate to such an extent that only the appearance of Jupiter on his eagle can make us trust, albeit maintaining some degree of doubt, that all will be resolved.
The grand final scene retrospectively sheds light on the play’s labyrinth of action, showing it for the theatrical fiction that it is: that is, an interaction between actors and spectators. Reconciliation thus takes place not only between the characters, but between the characters and the audience, and more generally between art and life.
I have translated the work in prose, focusing on meaning and completely disregarding the tone and the modality of the poetic discourse. Furthermore, using periphrasis as a device, I have transposed into prose all the poetic elements of Shakespeare’s verse: alliterations, allusions, puns and even metaphors. This meant that there was no need to skip anything or to come up with idiomatic equivalences, which have always seemed questionable to me. This method may mean that, although the (abundance of) jokes and obscenities may be less effective, they can all at least retain their place in the text.
This text was translated collaboratively by the members of the “Textured Translation” Challenge Lab:
- Jennifer Arnold, Lecturer in Spanish and Translation Studies with a focus on reading across cultures and social reading practices.
- Daisy Costello, currently a postgraduate student in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Their short story “The Oneirogen” was published in the undergraduate creative writing anthology The Modern Body.
- Asia Earlam, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Rosie Eaton, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Francis Jones, Emeritus Professor of Translation Studies and Principal Investigator of the Poettrio Experiment.
- Lara Kelland, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Claire Kimmance, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Adam Little, currently an undergraduate student in English Literature.
- Alicia McEvoy, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Eleanor McVay, a graduate of Newcastle University in English Literature and winner of the Cowan, Johnson and Watson Prize for Best Overall Performance in Literature.
- Em Morris, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Fatima Mouflih, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Philippa Page, Co-Director of the Humanities Research Institute at Newcastle University and a scholar of Latin American Cultural Studies, particularly the Southern Cone.
- Cassia Plain, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Emily Pocock, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
- Jennifer Richards, Professor and Chair (2001) of English at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of the British Academy, with a research focus on sixteenth-century literature and the digital humanities. At the time of the Textured Translation Challenge Lab, Jennifer Richards was Director of the Humanities Research Institute at Newcastle University.
- María Belén Riveiro, Research Fellow at the Instituto de Investigaciones Gino Germani, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad de Buenos Aires/Conicet, Argentina, specializing in the sociology of literature and the work of César Aira.
- Saskia Robbins, currently an undergraduate student in Modern Languages with Translation and Interpreting at Newcastle University.
