ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book analyses the cultural and historical forces at work in seventeenth-century England that inform and inspire its imagery. It looks at how performances have reshaped the text to fit their own period's cultural and political imperatives. Cymbeline as written, however, offers startling opportunity for reinterpretation in modern performance precisely because it deals so deftly with the, literally, burning problems in the culture of its own time and place. The book explores the sounds and gestures that are written into the words as well as their meanings; ask how these have been and might be realized in performance. It examines the historical context as well as the intrinsic plot and genre. The book also examines the historical context as well as the intrinsic plot and genre.
