The poetry is great but the plot is ludicrous -- what are the odds that her long lost brothers just happen to be at the place where she is to meet Posthumus? Did Posthumus somehow know this and plan on it? We're given no reason to think so. Also, it seems that Jupiter's descending to earth was not a dream sequence after all, since Posthumus bears the marks of it in the final scene.

Also, the queen just killed herself randomly? This is what caused peace between Rome and Britain? The stories don't really tie together the way they might seem to on the stage.

As for Cymbeline, he doesn't drive much action apart from setting up the initial problem. He's a spectator to everything else. The play should have been called Imogen, though she's perhaps too good to be true and therefore too good to be true. Posthumus then? That would fit more with the (rather curious) theme of rebirth and life after death.

Harold Bloom -- always interesting, even when wrong, especially when wrong -- cops out and says -- despite having no evidence whatsoever in authorial intent and despite authorial intent being irrelevant to the quality of a literary work -- that Cymbeline is Shakespeare parodying himself. Indeed, there are enough similarities with other plays (especially All's Well that Ends Well, which I coincidentally just read, a meta-coincidence since the plays' main weakness is a reliance on coincidence), but, again, it just doesn't follow from similarity that this, just because it's unbelievably contrived and complex, is a parody.

And there's no way you can call this a tragedy. This is a comedy in structure yet it's not funny at all.

Also, I just found out about this great site, and, rather than quote from it, I'll simply link to it: http://cabbard.com/index.php/Cymbeline#