Cymbeline The New Oxford Shakespeare

'I see a man's life is a tedious one.'

Set in Ancient Britain, Cymbeline is a play of deceit, disguise, banishment, and fidelity against the backdrop of a Roman invasion. When the King of Britain Cymbeline discovers his daughter's secret marriage, he banishes her husband to Rome, who then accuses Innogen of being unfaithful. Innogen must evade deadly plots and homicidal jealousy to restore her name. Long recognised as a response to James VI and I's project to unite England and Scotland, the play conjures ancient British history at a moment when that history was eroding, revealed as a medieval invention. This sense of historical endings is entangled with Cymbeline as a late play, and its numerous apparent callbacks across Shakespeare's career.

The New Oxford Shakespeare offers authoritative editions of Shakespeare's works with introductory materials designed to encourage new interpretations of the plays and poems. Using the text from the landmark The New Oxford Shakespeare Complete Works: Modern Critical Edition, these volumes offer readers the latest thinking on the authentic texts (collated from all surviving original versions of Shakespeare's work) alongside innovative introductions from leading scholars. The texts are accompanied by a comprehensive set of critical apparatus to give readers the best resources to help understand and enjoy Shakespeare's work.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

William Shakespeare

Kim Gilchrist is Lecturer in English Literature at Cardiff University. He holds a Ph.D from Roehampton University (2018). Kim was co-organiser with Dr Amy Lidster of the 2019 'Changing Histories' conference at King's College London. He has been an invited speaker at the universities of Oxford, Southampton, and Würzberg, the Malone Society, and the Rose Playhouse. Kim's work explores popular culture, interactions between history and romance, and modes of performance beyond London's professional drama. He has published articles on Mucedorus and King Lear, and a monograph on the performance of Britain's imagined pre-Roman history. He is currently writing a monograph on Mucedorus.

Rory Loughlane is Reader in Early Modern Studies and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, University of Kent. He is an award-winning scholar of early modern textual studies, authorship, intellectual history, theatre history, and literary criticism. He is an Associate Editor of The New Oxford Shakespeare and co-authored with Gary Taylor a book-length study about 'The Canon and Chronology of Shakespeare's works' and, in a series of attribution studies, he first identified Thomas Middleton as adapter of All's Well That Ends Well.

General Editors' Preface to The New Oxford ShakespeareIntroductionNote on the TextSelect BibliographyA Chronology of William ShakespeareCYMBELINE