Cymbeline is an interesting play, though I don’t entirely think I can describe its themes, or even its plot, very well. The thing that I kept thinking about pretty much through the whole thing was progression.
This play seems to consistently be listed as one of the last plays Shakespeare wrote. This was interesting because part of it felt very connected to The Winter’s Tale and The Tempest, in that it does not feel as bound by the rules of genre as much as most of his other plays do. However, the writing didn’t feel as polished to me and felt almost like it was something he’d written when he was much younger, came back to revise and edit, but got tired of the project and declared it finished before it really had that good old Shakespeare Polish. Call me crazy, but that’s just how I kept thinking about it. If I were to read it again, my impression could be entirely different.
As I near the end of this project, I think one of my favorite things about it is that it has made me think a great deal about progression. As much as the Bard is lauded and praised today, he has work that is superb and unrivaled, and he has work that is not as good. I’ve seen that in a very clear way, and it’s fascinating. It inspires and encourages me. It’s so easy to look at the pinnacle of someone else’s work and despair that you will never achieve anything nearing its greatness. But the fact of the matter is that somewhere, Picasso had paintings that are embarrassing, or doodles that look as lopsided as mine. Somewhere, Tolstoy had passages that would make us burst out laughing at how awful they are.
Everyone has to start somewhere. The thing that makes a difference is actually starting.
Over the course of 20-25 years, Shakespeare wrote 38 (ish) plays, and 154 sonnets. That, just to be clear, is an average of 1.5 plays and 6 sonnets per year (assuming it’s 25 years). He may not have been writing every spare second he had, but guess what? He was pretty darn consistent. And as good as he was, his career was anything but static. Nor was it a straight uphill climb.
During this project, I have discovered plays that I don’t like as much (or don’t like at all), but if anything, that has increased my appreciation of the Bard. It shows he was human. He was fallible. He wasn’t born a perfect writer.
Seeing him at his best, and at his worst, gives me a more complete picture of who he was as an individual, as a storyteller, and, yes, incontrovertibly as one of the greatest writers of all time.
