Item 19 - Letter from Gertrude Dubrovsky to Sir Walter Greg

1 single sheet

R.D.#1, Box #422, Farmingdale, New Jersey.—Disagrees with a statement in The Shakespeare First Folio regarding the vision scene in Cymbeline.

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Transcript

R. D. #1 Box #422
Farmingdale, New Jersey
April 22, 1958.

Mr. W. W. Greg
%† The Clarendon Press
Oxford, England

Dear Mr. Greg,

Recently, while doing some research on the sources for Cymbeline, I had occasion to read very carefully The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune. I was particularly interested in finding in the ‘interpolated’ vision scene (V.iv) of Cymbeline suggestions of this source, especially in Jupiter’s speech which appears more ‘Shakespearean’ than the rest.

The thought occurred to me that perhaps Shakespeare considered opening his play with a dumb show of some sort, involving the ghosts of ‘them that love and fortune slew’ or Posthumus’ family—all of whom died tragically. (In the source, Mercury, at Jupiter’s behest, brings in a dumb show of tragic victims.) Our author may then have planned to have Jupiter descend in lightening and thunder and give his speech, or at least part (omitting the last five lines) followed by Sicillius’ speech and then the opening of the play as it stands.

Of course, I realize that this theory is very conjectural and, indeed, may even have been postulated by others. However, on the basis of an examination of the two plays, I find myself in disagreement with your statement in The Shakespeare First Folio (p. 414), “Most critics regard the vision as ‘a spectacular theatrical interpolation’. If this is so, the manuscript containing it can hardly have been Shakespeare’s foul papers.” As the vision now stands in V.iv, I agree that it definitely was ‘a spectacular theatrical interpolation’, but it occurs to me that the germ of the idea was found crossed out or discarded among the foul papers.

I am really just a novice at scholarly research and I hope you are not too rudely annoyed by my glaring deficiencies in technique. I am most interested in your opinion on this hypothesis and I would truly consider it a great privilege to receive an answer from one whose work bears an unmistakable stamp of painstaking research and practice. If your time permits, a reply would be much appreciated.

Sincerely yours,
[Signed:] Gertrude Dubrovsky
Gertrude Dubrovsky

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Typed, except the signature and a correction.

† Sic.

Formerly inserted in Greg's copy of The Shakespeare First Folio (1955) (Adv. c. 26. 1).

This description was created by A. C. Green in 2020.