Amending Shakespeare: Bernard Shaw's Displeasure with Cymbeline, Act 5, in the Contexts of Modern Bardolatry and Syncretism

abstract:At the basis of Shaw's immaculate conception of "Bardolatry" was his tongue-in-cheek critique of William Shakespeare for not engaging deeply enough with social problems of the Elizabethan age in the manner Shaw himself addressed in his own time. Shaw chooses to equivocally demystify Shakespeare on the one hand and, on the other, eulogize him as the greatest of authors that ever lived. His ambivalent attitude to the poet is best expressed in his replacing of the fifth act of Cymbeline with his own version, Cymbeline Refinished, 1936 because he found in the original, "a tedious string of unsurprising dénouements sugared with insincere sentimentality." Shaw concludes his adapted version with lines about the necessity of English and Roman syncretism. This article will attempt to study the dynamics of Shaw's adaptation of Cymbeline, which, along with The Tempest, marked Shakespeare's concluding vision of British history during the reign of James I.