It is credited to Shakespeare, but it comes across as a kind of spoof play using bits and pieces of Shakespeare from Othello, The Tempest, Romeo & Juliet. Except it ends positively--with pure schmaltzy moralizing--not tragically.
It reads like Stargate having fun with its own tropes, except it is supposed to be serious. So more like a Hollywood production that is trying to capitalize on the latest trends by throwing them all into the screenplay and then demanding that the Oscars treat the result as an intellectual triumph.
Or something. None of the oddities are helped by people continually running off to Milford Haven in Wales (I'm serious). The whole thing sounds like a Greek tragedy set in Swansea or Staten Island.
The biggest reason to doubt that Shakespeare was taking himself even remotely seriously is the cause of jealousy between the primary couple. It is one of those cases where the Iago figure, Iachimo, persuades the dopey husband that because he has a particular belonging from the wife, she must be guilty of adultery. The dopey husband immediately believes Iachimo--who isn't motivated by anything more than being Italian and something of a playboy (again, I'm serious)--and complications ensue. (The play also includes kidnapped brothers grown to manhood living in the wilderness--Wales--and Roman senators wandering around Briton trying to get tribute and an evil stepmother and an evil prince and...I'M SERIOUS.)
Consider the differences between Imogen/Posthumus and Claudio/Hero from Much Ado About Nothing, not to forget the classic jealous husband/innocent wife: Othello/Desdemona.
"Here's our own hands against our hearts," Benedict proclaims at the end.
In Othello, the behavior of all characters, while not entirely explicable, is grounded in personality. In part, Othello is worked on by Iago, who is jealous of the world and wants to tear others down (Iago is a pre-social media "troll"). In part, Othello is susceptible due to his own mindset.
I said afterwards I thought it was pretty silly, because the Othello chap's meant to have done frightfully well in the army and be a wiz at strategy and all that. And in that case, he wouldn't be the sort of twit who thought his wife was having it off with someone else just because she lost her handkerchief. And Julia didn't agree. Well, what she was actually said was that I was a semi-educated flibbertigibbet whose powers of dramatic appreciation would be strained to the utmost by a Punch and Judy show....You see, the way Julia saw it was that a chap who'd spent all his life in the army was just the sort of chap to get a bee in his bonnet about pure womanhood and so on, because he wouldn't get the chance to find out that women were more or less like anyone else and he'd start getting all idealistic about them. So as soon as he found out that Desdemona wasn't perfect--I mean, the first time she spilt coffee or dropped cigarette ash on the carpet--he'd start feeling all disillusioned and thinking she'd betrayed his ideals. And after that, making him believe she was having it off with some other chap would be absolute child's play.
The meat of what Cantrip states is in Shakespeare's script.
In Cymbeline, there's little character development and little thematic development. Posthumous gets jealous on cue. Feels bad on cue. Iachimo behaves badly on cue. Repents on cue. Things happen because the script says so.
I can't help but wonder if Shakespeare was badgered by his shareholders into writing a play and said, "Fine! You want a play?! Here's all my ideas in a single script--I'll trot them out one after another."
Or, since Shakespeare wasn't adverse to making money, he said, "Sure! Let's trot out all my best ideas and make a bundle!"
Or maybe Shakespeare was getting meta:
