THE STAGE-HISTORY
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2010
Summary
Simon Forman saw the play, presumably at the Globe, on some date before 12 September 1611, when he died. In his Bocke [sic in MS.] of Plates he tells the plot and names the characters as in Shakespeare, except that he writes ‘Innogen’. Our only other record of a pre-Restoration performance is in the office-book of Sir Henry Herbert, who was Master of the Revels from 1622 to 1673. It states that the play was acted ‘at court by the Kings players’ on 1 January ‘1633’ (i.e. 1634), ‘well likte by the kinge’.
Our next information is of an adaptation which displaced Shakespeare's play on the stage for over sixty years. This was Thomas D'Urfey's The Injured Princess, or The Fatal Wager, published in 1682, and first performed that year at Theatre Royal–probably by the King's Company before the union with the Duke's in November. Again staged at Lincoln's Inn Fields in 1702, and each year, 1717–20, with seventeen showings in all, it was last given at Covent Garden on four nights of 1737, and on 20 March 1738. There is little to commend in D'Urfey's alteration, which Genest thought ‘vile’. He cut and rewrote freely. Act 5, scenes 3 and 4, are omitted; Act 4, scene 2, is a bad instance of his abridgements, with its sacrifice of the lovely dirge.
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- Information
- CymbelineThe Cambridge Dover Wilson Shakespeare, pp. xliii - lvPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1960