The Course of Recognition in Cymbeline

Abstract

It is common for scholars to describe the recognition scene (anagnorisis) described as an event of moral reconciliation, but few have reflected on the philosophical stakes involved in grounding morality in what amounts to a device of poetics. Matthew J. Smith uses Cymbeline to demonstrate the continual relevance of theatrical recognition for the philosophical discourse on mutual recognition as represented by writers including Hegel, Levinas, and Ricoeur. Cymbeline gestures toward tragedy by staging failures of recognition but ultimately moves into the post-tragic through what Smith describes as a return to anagnorisis.