Day 19: Cymbeline, by William Shakespeare.

As the one apparently often cited as the most overlooked for forgotten of Shakespeare's works, this was high on my list of plays to come to early in the year. I really enjoyed the story, and it's a refreshing change to have a happy ending and comparatively few deaths (though as I've half-joked about before, they are of course by duel and suicide respectively). The sudden divine cameo was a bit of a surprise, and thanks to my affinity for nerdy films I can only imagine Jupiter being played by Patrick Stewart or Anthony Hopkins (probably actually in the Odin costume).

I also find myself needing to re-evaluate my theory that Shakespeare doesn't write women I like. Imogen seems to very much know what she wants, and is willing to go to any length to get it. This is, as usual, in persuit of a man - and that has been part of my complaint, that Shakespeare's women tend to only be defined in relation to their suitors - but in this case she is also for most of the play in that misbehaving-heir position. The difference is in this case, brothers thought lost or dead are revealed right at the end thus freeing her up to go back to the man she loves and not be bound to the throne, something which would be almost impossible to explore as a storyline for a male counterpart. Imogen has some wonderful lines (and plenty of chunky speeches) making this a good play to earmark for further study and possible monologue selection.

A brief online search showed up a film adaptation due out in the new year sometime with Cymbeline (apparently in the original text/language) set as a gangland thriller. Not my usual fare in cinema (and I remember really disliking Romeo + Juliet taken in a similar vein) but I will probably see it once purely for being a Shakespeare adaptation. I'm not entirely convinced by hyper-modern settings of Shakespeare's plays when the language isn't accordingly updated. There is a happy medium - the sort of timelessly-modern setting such as Tennant's Hamlet (reviewed in an earlier post here) seems to work without the need for guns and car chases. Perhaps the deeply interwoven threads of story and layers of deception and revenge present in this one will stand up to the treatment better than Romeo + Juliet did. I can but hope.