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Introduction

In “Preface” (1765), Dr. Samuel Johnson memorably criticized Shakespeare’s dramaticnarration, as observing that Shakespeare“tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly deliveredin few... Not that always where the language is intricate the thought is subtle, or the imagealways great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected,and trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention.”1Johnson’s observation is usually quoted by many critics to support their ideas thatShakespeare’s romance is less valued, among which Cymbeline is usually regarded as thetypical one. In Johnson’s earlier critic work General Observations on the Plays ofShakespeare (1756), he commented that Cymbeline “has many just sentiments, somenatural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the expense of muchincongruity”, thus to remark its fool fiction, absurd conduct, confused names and manners,and impossible events, “were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecility, upon faults tooevident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.”2Johnson’s critics on Cymbelinemight have a great influence on later critics in that it has long been regarded as a notorious“fault” of style, and obviously Cymbeline has less been invested by compilers and critics,especially in the age of literary critics focusing on textual and structural analysis.Nevertheless, the emerging of new historicism provides a new prospective or chance toreevaluate this later work of Shakespeare and to understand the deep thinking of theinterweaving of historical and literary elements in this “unaccustomed Shakespeare”.
According to Stephen Greenblatt’s demonstration in Shakespearean Negotiations,“history cannot simply be set against literary texts as either stable antithesis or stablebackground, and the protective isolation of those texts gives way to a sense of theirinteraction with other texts and hence of the permeability of their boundaries.”3It directlypointed to the essential ideas of new historicism that history and literature are in “equalweight”, for both history compilation and literature creation are tainted with subjectivity ofthe author’s attitudes or tendency. Louis Montrose identifies it as “the Textuality ofHistory” and “the Historicity of Text”.4As H. Aram Veeser argues that, “every expressiveact [in literature works] is embedded in a network of material practices”, and “literary andnon-literary ‘texts’ circulate inseparably”.5In other word, literary arts are formed in theircultural context, and in return support, challenge, or shape their cultural context. In the newhistoricist practice of literature criticism, literature is no longer the “foreground” of analysis,and history not the “background”. With such a mode of parallel interpretation, literarycritics focus their attention not only on the orthodox cultural context, but on the differentvoices of a broader social dimension. Thus, on account of the breakthrough in the dualopposite concept of literature and history, those oppressed and implied voices are eager tobe excavated. It can be proved by their practices of analyzing the Renaissance drama,especially the historical play in which they annotates it as more like “political drama”,because the playwrights not merely chronically arranged the happened events butelaborately recorded the origins and transition, essence and skeletons of socially politicalsys