SOURCE: “Stuart Cymbeline,” in Essays in Criticism, Vol. 11, No. 1, January, 1961, pp. 84-99.

In the following essay, Jones compares the character and foreign policy of James I with those of Cymbeline and his court.

Johnson had this to say about Cymbeline:

This play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity.

To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the names and manners of different times, and the impossibility of the events in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecillity, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.

The editor of the New Cambridge Cymbeline, Mr. J. C. Maxwell, after quoting this passage, is willing to concede something to Johnson:

Is it enough to say that most of these ‘faults’ are of...