...differently to Cymbeline. At one extreme are the Rationalists, chief among them Dr. Johnson (1765): To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity...evident for detection and too gross for aggravation. At the other extreme are the Imogenolaters, of whom perhaps the best example is Swinburne (1880): The...

...sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the expense of much incongruity. To remark the folly of the fiction,...faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.3 More recently Arthur C. Kirsch insisted that Cymbeline "is resistant to any coherent...

...377) [178] [End-note to Cymbeline] This Play has many just sentiments, some natural dialogues, and some pleasing scenes, but they are obtained at the...of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecillity, upon faults too evident for detection and too gross for aggravation.1 (VII, 403) [179]...

...of rationalist critics such as Samuel Johnson and Bernard Shaw. Johnson notoriously complained that 'To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity...faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation'.9 Shaw's main criticisms of the play come in a review of Henry Irving's production of...

...this quality leads to "incongruity" and detracts from Cymbeline's overall effectiveness: "To remark on the folly of the fiction, the absurdity of the conduct,...in any system of life, were to waste criticism upon unresting imbecility, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation."4 For Granville-Barker,...

...simply a failure. Dr. Johnson, in his edition (1765), found the play's complex dramaturgy too much: To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity...evident for detection and too gross for aggravation. Modern critics have often resorted to the word "experimental" to describe the remarkable assemblage...

...fancy. She quotes at length Johnson's scathing conclusion to his remarks on this play, which ends: To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity...evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation. "How would a modern author writhe," remarks Inchbald, "under a critique that should accuse his drama,...

...absurd and ridiculous to the last degree'. Johnson was to write with similar contempt of the same play: 'To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity...evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.' So much for Cymbeline. Johnson inordinately admired Mrs Lennox, and it would be interesting to know...

...to be charitable with Cymbeline and then gives up. ' To remark the folly of the fiction', he says, 'the absurdity of the conduct, the confusion of the...faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation.'28 We watch him do the predictable, let fly with one of his favourite indignations, when...

...Coker," V. 272 "aristocrat of middlebrows, Dr. Johnson.": Johnson wrote of Cymbeline, for example: 'To remark the folly of the fiction, the absurdity...of life, were to waste criticism upon unresisting imbecillity, upon faults too evident for detection, and too gross for aggravation." See Johnson on...