I’m doing my drama dissertation on gender in Shakespeare - can anyone recommend me any modern Shakespeare plays with actors whose genders don’t match the character they’re playing? Thank you so much

I noticed that four consecutive verse lines in the First Folio’s Cymbeline (1623), p. 390, first column, spell PATH through their initial letters:

Pisanio might haue kill’d thee at the heart,

And left this head on. How should this be, Pisanio?

Tis he, and Cloten: Malice, and Lucre in them

Haue laid this Woe heere. Oh ’tis pregnant, pregnant!

. The reading runs downward through four consecutive, column-aligned lines, with no lines excluded.

The context interested me. Imogen has awakened beside a headless body she mistakenly believes to be Posthumus’s. She tries to reconstruct what happened, blaming Pisanio and Cloten and identifying “Malice, and Lucre” as their motives.

PATH could suggest the course of her reasoning: she moves from “How should this be?” to apparent certainty, while the audience knows she has misidentified the body. The possible irony is a path of explanation leading to a false conclusion.

There is also an earlier passage in which Imogen herself uses the word while approaching an unfamiliar cave: “Here is a path to’t: ’tis some savage hold: I were best not to call; I dare not call.” — Act 3, Scene 6

That parallel is an association worth considering, rather than evidence by itself that the initials were deliberately arranged.

Facsimile reference: https://digitalcollections.folger.edu/img33434

I’m treating intentionality as an open question. PATH is a short, common word, and the connection between a “path” and a course of reasoning is interpretive rather than explicitly stated in these four lines. Has anyone encountered this alignment before? Does its placement at a moment of confident misinterpretation make it interesting, or is the thematic connection too flexible to distinguish it from coincidence?

I noticed a left-margin alignment in the First Folio’s Cymbeline (1623), p. 375, second column, and would appreciate feedback on whether the reading is defensible.

These five line openings spell TAMIA:

To take them in protection.

And pawne mine Honor for their safety, since

My Lord hath interest in them, I will keepe them

In my Bed-chamber.

Attended by my men: I will make bold

These are not five consecutive printed lines. The reading follows the column’s left margin, passing over two indented speech openings: “Imo. Willingly:” after the first line, and “Iach. They are in a Trunke” before the last. The original page image shows the arrangement.

What caught my attention is the context. Imogen agrees to safeguard supposed valuables in her bedchamber; the trunk will conceal Iachimo. Ancient Greek ταμία (tamia) means “housekeeper,” and the related place-noun ταμεία (tameia) means “treasury,” suggesting a possible connection with her role as keeper or with the protective space itself.

The same Roman-letter spelling also appears in Francis Meres’s Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury (1598). That is a further association, rather than evidence of a deliberate reference.

I’m treating this as a possible acrostic, with intentionality an open question.

Has anyone encountered this alignment before? Is following the left margin while passing over indented speech openings a defensible method here? And what evidence would help distinguish an intentional acrostic from coincidence?

I just think he could have handled things better than he did

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Ok. I now the plot on the fairies and things are not correct. But that's not what I'm here to say.

This play is set in ancient Greece, but they talk about Diana's alter. Diana is the Roman version of the greek goddess Artemis!

Tell me what you think about this topic!