Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Ever think you could improve Shakespeare? Back in 1682, Thomas Durfey did. He rewrote the play and called it The Injured Princess, or the Fatal Wager (source).
Shakespeare came up with the phrase "I have not slept one wink" and used it for the first time in this play (source). Pisanio says it to Imogen over his turmoil about killing her (3.4.102).
Cymbeline is one of the few plays that we have an audience response to from Shakespeare's day. Simon Foreman recorded seeing it in 1611 and wrote down what he thought about it in his diary (source).
Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, and Samuel Beckett all give Cymbeline a shout-out in their own works. In fact, they all refer to the same passage: the funeral song in Act 4, Scene 2 (source).
Cunobeline (Cymbeline) was a British king, back in ancient times. You might say Cymbeline is based on a true story—at least the characters were; the rest is Shakespeare's imagination (source).