Ugh. I feel bad giving any Shakespeare play two stars, I really do, but I just could not get into this. It reminds me very much of Measure for Measure, which I also gave two stars, and for much the same reason - unlikable characters, including a doormat of a heroine, and the play's total refusal to rate these people as they deserve. (Fuck off, Angelo, I have neither forgiven nor forgotten.)

The basic conceit of this play is that Leonatus sets up a shit test of his wife, Imogen, and things go to pot. Believing her to have failed, he arranges her murder. Of course things work out in the end and she forgives him(!) like the simpering little twit that she is, but what really gets my goat is that the text, and a good number of the characters, fall over themselves to praise Leonatus, all through the damn play, as an absolute paragon of manhood. No. No he isn't. He's a shit-testing murderous moron, and I could happily live with that if the text just acknowledged that that was what he was, but it doesn't.

Predictably, the best part of Cymbeline occurs when acknowledgement of character is razor accurate. Cloten, the stepson of Cymbeline and one of the villains of the piece, is deeply entertaining. He's a puffed-up, arrogant, awful individual, completely self-deluded as to capacity and position, and he is ruthlessly dragged by pretty much everyone who comes in contact with him. It's very very funny, and for sheer amusement value, I'd far rather he survived to the end of the play than Leonatus, who can go join Fucking Angelo in the dungeon full of Shakespeare's ill-rewarded dicks.