For this there are several causes. One perhaps is its mixed character, its vague, elusive purpose, and its unreality of effect. From the nature of his story--a tale of stern facts and airy inventions, respecting Britain and Rome, two thousand years ago--the poet seems to have been compelled to make a picture of human life too literal to be viewed wholly as an ideal, and too romantic to be viewed wholly as literal. In the unequivocally great plays of Shakespeare the action moves like the mighty flow of some resistless river. In this one it advances with the diffusive and straggling movement of a summer cloud. The drift and meaning of the piece, accordingly, do not stand boldly out. That astute thinker, Ulrici, for instance, after much brooding upon it, ties his mental legs in a hard knot and says that Shakespeare intended, in this piece, to illustrate that man is not the master of his own destiny. There must be liberal scope for conjecture when a philosopher can make such a landing as that. The persons in _Cymbeline_, moreover--aside from the exceptional character of Imogen--do not come home to a spectator's realisation, whether of sympathy or repugnance. It is like the flower that thrives best under glass but shivers and wilts in the open air. Its poetry seems marred by the rude touch of the actual. Its delicious mountain scenes lose their woodland fragrance. Its motive, bluntly disclosed in the wager scene, seems coarse, unnatural, and offensive. Its plot, really simple, moves heavily and perplexes attention. It is a piece that lacks pervasive concentration and enthralling point. It might be defined as _Othello_ with a difference--the difference being in favour of _Othello_. Jealousy is the pivot of both: but in _Othello_ jealousy is treated with profound and searching truth, with terrible intensity of feeling, and with irresistible momentum of action. A spectator will honour and pity Othello, and hate and execrate Iago--with some infusion, perhaps of impatience toward the one and of admiration for the other--but he is likely to view both Leonatus and Iachimo with considerable indifference; he will casually recognise the infrequent Cymbeline as an ill-tempered, sonorous old donkey; he will give a passing smile of scornful disgust to Cloten--that vague hybrid of Roderigo and Oswald; and of the proceedings of the Queen and the fortunes of the royal family--whether as affected by the chemical experiments of Doctor Cornelius or the bellicose attitude of Augustus Caesar, in reaching for his British tribute--he will be practically unconscious. This result comes of commingling stern fact and pastoral fancy in such a way that an auditor of the composition is dubious whether to fix his senses steadfastly on the one or yield up his spirit to poetic reverie on the other.