The three tales of Cymbeline Cymbeline has always been a difficult work to classify. The original collection of Shakespeare's works, "The First Folio" (published 1623), classifies it as a tragedy; modern editors have revised it to a comedy and, to further distinguish it from other comedies, it is also defined, together with The Tempest, The Winter's Tale and Pericles, a love story. Of course, like so many of Shakespeare's works, these classifications are only guidelines rather than definitions, since attempting to analyze a work of art according to somewhat arbitrary classifications is to diminish the very essence - its originality - that makes it an work of art. Undoubtedly, there are many aspects, patterns and rhythms in this work that echo in many of Shakespeare's other tragedies, comedies and even stories, as he used all of his works to see and explore a multi-faceted human condition from a variety of angles. There seem to be three main narratives in Cymbeline: the story of Imogene and Postumus, with the evil Iachimo lurking beside them, ready to destroy their happiness; the story of two sons, Guiderius and Arviragus, who are separated from their father and are eventually returned to him; and King Cymbeline's successful defense of Britain against foreign invasion, the single character most involved in all three stories, hence the play's name. The substructure that supports these three plots is a virtual labyrinth of subplots and strands that enter and exit each story until the final scenes, when Shakespeare, in a masterful epilogue, perhaps unparalleled even in his own works, weaves together each skein (about two dozen or so), in a... middle of paper... end, King Cymbeline calls for a lasting peace between Rome and England, a peace that is an adequate solution not only to the war but also to the internal one conflicts, when wives and husbands, fathers and children return to harmony with each other. But Cymbeline, for all its tragicomic schemes, romantic devices and historical pretensions, is at heart, as Northrop Frye says, "a pure story told, with a cruel stepmother with her loutish son, a slandered maiden, lost princes reared in a cave from an adoptive father, an identification ring that works in reverse, villains displaying fake trophies of adultery and faithful servants displaying equally fake trophies of murder, along with a grand fireworks display of dreams, prophecies, signs, portents and wonders It is a complex journey of love, forgiveness, jealousy, murder, war and peace.