The Dream of Cymbeline Ovid and the Idea of Late Shakespeare

Abstract

We can, in part, thank the Victorians and their interest in assigning a narrative to Shakespeare’s body of work for the very idea of Shakespeare’s “late plays.” Russ McDonald recounts this development:

Since Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest undeniably resembled one another and differed from the rest of the canon, the decision to group them into one category and interpret them as the culmination of an artistic career—of the artistic career—struck a cultural chord, harmonizing with Victorian ideas of struggle and triumph, sin and redemption.¹