Correspondence

Abstract

274Comparative Drama where again one questions whether Terry on stage would not have modified the bloom of womanliness which Millais gives her. Such a large and eclectic collection, which contains portraits of the main protagonists from all but Shakespeare's most contentious works, and executed from various artistic perspectives, is beyond the scope of a short review, but the opportunity to know what the Folger holds is to be valued, and the organization provided by the Catalogue provides the scholar with a welcome guided introduction. SANDRA BILLINGTON University of Glasgow CORRESPONDENCE To the Editor: In his recent review in Comparative Drama (Winter 1993-94) of my iconographie study Myth, Emblem, and Music in Shakespeare's Cymbeline (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), Michael Bath makes a number of astounding factual errors that can only prejudice readers against my book. Although differences of opinion between a reviewer and an author are to be expected and are very much part of the scholarly tradition, I believe that incorrect statements of fact and the careless misrepresentation of an author's argument are unacceptable in a book review appearing in a reputable literary journal and must be corrected. First, after approving of certain aspects of Myth, Emblem, and Music, Dr. Bath writes that "The idea that the whole play is a spiritual and neo-Platonic allegory of the soul's quest for God is a more challenging assumption, however, and one which I have to say I do not find wholly convincing" (Bath, pp. 468-69). I never claimed such a thesis for Cymbeline and would not even consider it as reasonable. Bath apparently picked up a statement of mine concerning Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche myth, which I see as the major subtext of the Imogen plot in Cymbeline and thus as a source for the play. After a review of various medieval interpretations of this central myth of The Golden Ass, I state that "Later Florentine humanists understood the myth more correctly as a Platonic allegory of the Soul's journey toward a union with Desire (Eros), which in turn leads to a union with God, the final goal of human life" (Simonds, p. 83). This specific reading of the Cupid and Psyche myth concerns Apuleius only and is noi my interpretation of Shakespeare's play. Actually, I agree with James J. Yoch, Jr., that the basic theme of all Renaissance tragicomedies is ultimately temperance—within the individual, the family, and the state. I further argue in Myth, Emblem, Correspondence275 and Music that the achievement of such temperance (or playing in tune musically) in Shakespeare's tragicomedy involves both personal sacrifice and reform or retuning. "The true central theme of tragicomedy is, therefore, nothing less than reformation, a theme that echoes and reechoes in Cymbeline by means of Shakespeare's bird, animal, vegetable , mineral, and musical symbols as well as through the mimetic action of the characters onstage" (Simonds, p. 343). This complex dramatic process of retuning self, family, and society in the play is what all Shakespeare's final tragicomedies are very generally about, as I explain in the book. My thesis statement appears in the last chapter and logically . derives from Chapter 1 in which I provide an extended definition of the Renaissance tragicomic genre through a comparison of Cymbeline with the Italian originals from which it derives—Tasso's Aminta (1573), and Guarini's // pastor fido (1590). The latter play was translated into English as The Faithful Shepherd by John Dymock in 1602. Bath not only misstates my thesis but makes absolutely no mention of its theoretical origins in the genre of Renaissance tragicomedy which has nine clearly distinguished characteristics, although the readers of Comparative Drama would surely have an interest in such a comparison of three similar plays of the same period. Equally false is Bath's statement that "Simonds is intent on identifying Imogen with goddesses . . . because her interpretation depends on seeing Imogen as the symbol of Divine Love (Anteros), which the unredeemed characters are as yet unfit to apprehend" (Bath, p. 470). Once again this is a gross misrepresentation of what I actually wrote. Anteros is not the symbol of Divine Love (or God's love for...