The Three Tales of CymbelineCymbeline has always been a difficult play to categorize. The original collection of Shakespeare's plays, "The First Folio" (published in 1623), classifies it as a tragedy; modern editors have revised this as a comedy, and to further distinguish it from other comedies it is also called, along with The Tempest, The Winter's Tale and Pericles, a romance. Of course, like so many of Shakespeare's plays, these classifications are only guidelines rather than definitions, because to attempt to analyze a work of art according to somewhat arbitrary classifications is to diminish the very essence – its originality – which makes it a work of art. art. Undoubtedly, there are many aspects, patterns and rhythms in this play that echo many of Shakespeare's other tragedies, comedies and even stories, as he used all of his plays to view and explore a multi-faceted human condition under various angles. There seem to be three main narratives for Cymbeline: the story of Imogen and Posthumus, with the evil Iachimo lurking at their side, about to destroy their happiness; the story of two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, who were separated from their father and finally returned to him; and King Cymbeline's successful defense of Britain against foreign invasion, the character most involved in all three stories, hence the play's name. The structure that supports these three plots is a virtual maze of subplots and strands that move in and out of each tale until the final scenes at the end, when Shakespeare, in a masterful, perhaps unprecedented even in his own pieces, weaves each skein (about two dozen), into a... middle of paper...... end, King Cymbeline calls for a lasting peace between Rome and England, a peace that is a appropriate resolution not only to war, but also to internal conflicts, as wives and husbands, fathers and children return to harmony with one another. But Cymbeline, for all its tragi-comic schemes, its romantic devices and its historical pretensions, is at heart, as Northrop Frye says, "a pure tale, featuring a cruel stepmother with her boorish son, a slandered young girl, lost princes raised in a cave by an adoptive father, a recognition ring that works in reverse, villains showing off fake adultery trophies, and loyal servants also showing off fake murder trophies, accompanied by a big fire of dreams, prophecies, signs, omens and wonders It is a complex journey of love, forgiveness, jealousy, murder, war and peace...